TikTok is convinced you can make cookie dough from cottage cheese. I tried it — and sorry, I'm not buying it.

• Cottage-cheese cookie dough is the latest viral recipe to take TikTok by storm.

• The recipe was originally shared on the platform by New York Times best-selling author, Jake Cohen.

• With all due respect to Cohen, I found this treat more bitter than sweet.

For some reason unbeknownst to me, cottage cheese is having a moment.

As of Friday, the tag "Cottage Cheese Recipes" has over 26.3 million views on the platform with users sharing unique ways to use a humble tub of cottage cheese to make scrambled eggs, a dip for sausages, and cheesecake.

But the wildest recipe I've come across so far has got to be cottage-cheese cookie dough.

Jake Cohen, a chef and New York Times bestselling author, originally shared the recipe in a video in May. It's since exploded across the platform, amassing over 4.8 million views, and dividing opinion.

Narrating the clip, Cohen said he was "honestly ashamed" to share the recipe but "kind of obsessed" with it nonetheless.

One of the top-liked comments under the video was from a user asking someone to make it and tell them "if it's actually good."

I took one for the team and gave it go. Read on to hear my verdict.

Chef Jake Cohen's recipe for cottage-cheese cookie dough only calls for six ingredients.

To make Cohen's cottage-cheese cookie dough, you'll need:

• 2 cups of almond flour

• 1/4 cup of maple syrup

• 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract

• 1/2 cup vanilla protein powder

• 1 cup of dark chocolate chips

• 1 pound of low-fat cottage cheese

Most of the ingredients were easy to source at my local grocery store, except for the vanilla protein powder and the almond flour, which I eventually found at Holland & Barrett, a health food shop here in the UK.

Starting off, I popped a pound of cottage cheese into my blender.

I couldn't remember the last time I actually ate cottage cheese so before I scooped all of it into the blender, I had a small taste.

Despite its unappetizing appearance (let's be honest, cottage cheese looks to me like expired milk), I thought the flavor was much like Greek yogurt, but perhaps a little saltier.

Next up, I poured in the maple syrup.

I was hoping the maple syrup would bring enough sweetness to balance the savory saltiness of the cottage cheese.

The last liquid to go into the blender was vanilla extract.

I poured in the two teaspoons of vanilla extract and then the wet ingredients were ready for blending.

The wet ingredients nearly put me off trying the whole recipe before I blended them.

The combination of maple syrup, cottage cheese, and vanilla extract sitting in the blender didn't look like something I'd want to eat.

But after 30 seconds in the blender, the creamy mixture was much more pleasing to the eye.

The creamy texture combined with the sweet scent of vanilla reminded me a lot of a vanilla milkshake or vanilla-flavored yogurt.

At this point, I started to think this recipe really could be a winner.

Then, it was time to throw in the dry ingredients — for starters, I added in the almond flour.

The texture of the almond flour was really crumby and grainy. Adding it to the bowl made the mixture start to look slightly more like cookie dough.

Then, I added in the vanilla protein powder.

I'm not a regular consumer of protein powder so I ended up buying some for this recipe.

I picked up Form Performance's vanilla-flavored protein powder from the store. The powder is dairy free, gluten free, and vegan and is made from organic pea, brown rice, and pumpkin seed.

The wet and dry ingredients combined super easily.

It took me less than two minutes to mix the ingredients together until combined, similar to any other time I've made traditional cookie dough.

Upon closer inspection, the "dough" was very grainy and looked almost like dried out oatmeal.

The grayish, lumpiness of the mixture was not at all appetizing to me, but I held off trying it until I completed the recipe per Cohen's instructions.

The final step was adding in the chocolate chips.

I accidentally bought white chocolate chips so decided to do a combination of those with chopped up chunks of a bar of chocolate I already had at home.

From a distance and with the right lighting, the final result could possibly be mistaken for regular cookie dough.

In the sun, the cottage-cookie dough had the tan color that I typically associate with cookie dough.

Nonetheless, I couldn't quite get over how grainy the mixture looked in comparison to regular cookie dough.

I had several bites and quickly came to the following conclusion: Cottage cheese is not cookie dough.

Sorry, not sorry.

I was not a fan of TikTok's beloved cottage-cheese cookie dough for a few reasons.

For one, the grainy texture I was worried about from early on in the process was the first thing I noticed when I tried the mixture. It made my mouth dry very quickly and crumbs got stuck in-between my teeth.

Worse still was the lingering aftertaste from each bite that reminded me of the artificial, bitter flavor of play dough from my childhood. To me, the cottage-cheese cookie dough tasted like something you shouldn't eat, despite it being perfectly safe to do so.

While I wasn't impressed, my mom gave it a taste and didn't hate it. In fact, she said it "has potential" and that she could see herself having a scoop of it on top of ice cream or in an açai bowl. I couldn't tell whether she being honest or trying to convince herself it was palatable.

Either way, my final thought from this taste test is that maybe it's time we leave cottage cheese alone. I'm all for kitchen experiments but, at the end of the day, no single food item can replace everything — and that's OK!

Read the original article on Insider