As one of my holiday cookie recipes this year I made the delicious chocolate cherry shortbread cookies. My son and I ate a bit of the cookie dough before baking them, and we both thought the dough would make excellent cookie dough ice cream. So of course I had to try it. I saved some of the raw cookie dough in my freezer when I baked the cookies so I would have it for this chocolate cherry cookie dough ice cream.
I used a really good vanilla ice cream recipe as my base for this. It is a custard based ice cream using egg yolks. I’ve mentioned before how much I love my ice cream maker. It works so well, and only takes 15 minutes or so to churn the ice cream. It it fairly small and inexpensive too.
To make good vanilla ice cream you can either steep vanilla beans in the milk/cream first, or you can use a shortcut and use vanilla bean paste, like I recommended in my post on foodie stocking stuffers. I use the paste because it is a lot less work and you can adjust the vanilla flavor to your liking.
You could make just the base ice cream recipe here for some fantastic vanilla ice cream. You could also add any cookie dough you like to it. Some other favorite options to mix into the ice cream are oreos with my homemade fudge sauce, my salted caramel sauce, a swirl of raspberry sauce, or a peanut butter swirl with some chocolate chunks.
Chocolate Cherry Cookie Dough Ice Cream
Ingredients
- 1 cup whole milk
- 2 cups cream
- 3/4 cup sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tbsp vanilla bean paste
- pinch of salt
- 6 large egg yolks
- chocolate cherry cookie dough or other mix ins
Instructions
- Combine the sugar, milk and 1 cup of the cream, along with the salt in a sauce pan on the stove. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks.
- Heat the mixture over medium until warmed and starting to steam a bit. Do not boil.
- Slowly pour a small amount of the cream mixture into the yolks, whisking the entire time. You are tempering the yolks so that they don't curdle when you cook them. Continue pouring a little hot cream at a time into the yolks while whisking until you have used about half the cream mixture.
- Now put the pot back on stove and pour the egg mixture back into the pot. Stir with a baking spatula, scraping the bottom, over medium low as the mixture thickens. Continue cooking until it coats the back of your spatula and leaves a clean line when you run your finger through it. Pour through a fine mesh strainer into a clean bowl and add the rest of the cream, vanilla and vanilla bean paste and whisk.
- Place plastic wrap over the surface of the custard and place in the fridge for a least 4 hours or overnight. It should be down to 40 degrees before you churn it.
- Place into the canister of the ice cream maker and churn according to instructions. Near the end of churning, add in the cookie dough or other mix ins and mix just enough to combine. Transfer to a freezer container and allow to harder in the freezer.