Oatmeal Cookie Ice Cream

By Christy

Did you know that a week ago today was National Ice Cream Day? In honor of the holiday, Big Cat and I headed to a local ice cream shop in East Nashville (we have claimed this one as our favorite ice cream shop),  The Pied Piper Creamery in 5 spots. They always have super fun flavors and they are always super delicious. (One time they even had Sun Drop flavored ice cream--- Delish!) But my recent favorite has been their Oatmeal Raisin Cookie Ice Cream. It is rich, creamy, has the perfect blast of cinnamon, and it's full of oatmeal cookie dough (I think). Now if any of you are on a budget, you know a homemade waffle cone full of creamery made ice-cream can almost run you $5 a cone so I decided I wanted to attempt to recreate a similar version of this ice-cream so we can indulge in this treat more often. While The Pied Piper Creamery has mastered their art, I thought this recipe ended up being a great alternative that was very easy to make. I baked my cookie dough into cookies and the crunch of the cookie lasted even when it was in the ice-cream. I love having the little bit of crunch in my tasty treat. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

8 pre made oatmeal raisin cookies baked or raw (I baked them)
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup milk (I used 2% but for rich ice-cream whole milk is usually recommended)
2 eggs
3/4 cups granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 teaspoons cinnamon





If you choose to bake the cookies, make according to the directions. Once cool, chop the cookies into small pieces the cool in the fridge and save for later.


Mix the milk and cream together in a pan over medium-low heat. Heat the milk mixture for 10 minutes or until it reaches 140°F and then remove it from the heat. In a bowl, beat the eggs until lighter in color and fluffy. Add the sugar and the vanilla to the egg mixture very slowly.


 Then slowly whisk the milk mixture into the egg & sugar mixture to temper the eggs. If you added the milk to the egg mixture quickly then the hot milk would cook the eggs and you would have scrambled eggs, you don't want that! Now add the the entire egg/sugar/milk mixture into a pot and heat over medium-low heat for 15 minutes, stirring frequently. Remove mixture from the heat and pour it into a clean bowl and refrigerate the mixture for 1 hour. Stir in the cinnamon and freeze the ice cream according to your ice cream maker's manufacturer instructions.


 I added half of the cold oatmeal cookie pieces into the ice cream mixture 5 minutes before it was done mixing and then folded in the rest after removing the ice cream from the ice cream maker.


This recipe was inspired by Shannon from Dinner or Dessert.