“The best way to eat cookies,” said our young guest as he plopped a spoonful of cookie dough on top of a baked cookie. “Best.”

And that made me think about my cookie-making history, because I thought I had seen every method of eating and snitching bookie dough. But this was new: cookie dough as frosting.

I’ve been making chocolate chip cookies for a long time, long enough that all the adult children know the rules: no snitching of dough until the flour is in.

And now I have grandchildren helping me make cookies and I’ve had to start the process all over again with the snitch rules.

Recently, I made cookies while the two-year-old sat on the counter by me and the four-year-old stood on a chair so he could turn the mixer on and off. (They know the rules about the mixer, too.) The four-year-old was busy adding ingredients. The two-year-old, meanwhile, had lifted the lid on a canister of raisins and was eating handfuls of raisins.

He’d crack the egg if I wanted, but otherwise he’d eat raisins.

He ate raisins until the chocolate chips appeared and then he traded handfuls of raisins for handfuls of chocolate chips.

Then the boys switched to spoons, once the flour and chips were mixed in. They know which drawer and they know they get one spoonful before dropping their spoons in the sink. This is making cookies to them.

I think cookies are meant to be baked but my family would differ. I could leave the dough out and it would soon be consumed.

“We’re saving energy,” one son told me.  Yeah, his sons are the ones with the spoons at ready when the dough is mixed.

When I described the new way of eating cookies to our son, his eyes lit up. “That is the best,” he said and reached for a spoon.