Cookie dough ice cream

Well I have been chipping away at this project for the last 24-30 hours or so. 

I can't eat dairy, so ice cream is a bit of a trick! Fortunately I have discovered some awesome replacements using coconut milk.

My favourite right now is:

2 cans coconut milk 

1 tbsp vanilla (I use home made)

1/4 cup cacao (like cocoa only healthier)

25 dates (pitted)

(Opt) A bit of vanilla or chocolate protein

Throw it all in your blender  until smooth and then chill 24 hrs before processing in ice cream maker. 

But then I was curious what all the hype was about egg yolks in ice cream. So naturally I decided to give it a go. 

But if I am going on an adventure might as well go all the way right? Time to try to make cookie dough ice cream!

So first I found a coconut milk ice cream recipe that uses egg yolks and tweaked it to have less sugar. 

These are my ingredients. (No that's not vodka... Not really anyway. It's homemade vanilla extract. More on that in a moment). I chose to use maple sugar because it has a nice flavour and has close to half of the sugar per TBSP as sugar has! I got mine at Costco.   I also like Thai kitchen coconut milk because it is the thickest. 

So first I cut the sugar down to 1/2 a cup of maple sugar. You stir the sugar and egg yolks together, add your milk and slowly heat up. (The recipe said do not boil, but I accidentally boiled mine and it was just fine). Basically you make a custard and add your vanilla to it. 

Then pop it in the fridge for around 24 hrs. I did 12 and it looks like this. (I would do longer next time). Nice and thick and delicious. 

Side track: homemade vanilla is super easy! It's just vodka and split vanilla beans. Let it infuse for a couple months (the longer the better) and then use as you would any other vanilla. Now I am no drinker so I'm sure you can imagine guilty little me walking into the liquor mart with my baby in his stroller. Oh the looks I got... Haha! Anyways I tried it with a small bottle and loved it. Now I'm brewing up this puppy!

Don't judge me... Christmas is coming!! (Also I don't feed my child alcohol... Just thought it was cute and he loved the glass bottle). 

Anyway! Next I whipped up my cookie dough bits. Naturally I can't leave well-enough alone. So I started with an unhealthy recipe, replacing butter with coconut oil, sugar with coconut sugar (it has a really nice brown sugar flavour but a really low glycemic index. I try not to use it too often because it is made from coconut flowers... So coconut sugar =no coconuts). I also cut the amount down from 3/4 cup to 1/2 a cup. 

I replaced white flour with whole wheat, and threw in oats cause I love them. 

Also I have a bit of a hatred for chocolate chips in frozen things. It's like biting a piece of gravel to me... So I used coconut (see the theme?).  So my cookie dough pieces were oatmeal coconut instead of chocolate chip.  

Once my ice cream custard was in the fridge, I whipped up the cookie dough and rolled it thin between two pieces of waxed paper, froze it, then crumbled it. 

This is what it looked like. Next time I think I would make tiny little balls instead just for a better end appearance. 

So now I had everything ready! My ice cream maker bowl was well frozen (I basically store it in there)

Can you spot it? Haha oh freezer space...

So first I processed the ice cream for 15 minutes. 

First it looked like this

And then it looked like this. 

That's when you know you are almost done. I like to let it run close to 20 minutes.  However, because I walked away to take pictures of my child with a bottle of vodka, this happened...

At first I thought it was over frozen but really it was just the outside layer. The inside was still a little soft. Oh well. Now I know. Stay there and poke around in there if things jam up.

Pour it all into a bowl and add your cookie dough pieces

Then stir it up and voila!!

I like stiffer ice cream so I store mine in the freezer for a bit first. This batch turned out a bit too icy. That is likely because it didn't churn properly after it jammed up, and most of the ice cream wasn't frozen enough. 

Cookie Dough Ice Cream (dairy free)

Ice cream:

- 2 cans of coconut milk

- 4 egg yolks

- 1/2 cup maple sugar

- 1 tbsp homemade vanilla (less if its fake)

Cookie dough bits:

- 1/4 cup whole wheat flour

- 3/4 cup quick oats (or another 1/2 c flour)

- 1/2 cup coconut oil

- 1/2 cup coconut sugar (or brown sugar)

- 1 tsp vanilla

- 1/4 tsp salt

- 2 tbsp coconut milk

- 1/2 cup unsweetened coconut (or mini chocolate chips)

Combine all ingredients for ice cream and slowly heat up in a saucepan. Scald and try not to boil (but if it does, it's not the end of the world). Chill in the fridge for 24 hours

Stir together coconut oil and coconut sugar. Add coconut milk and vanilla. Stir in flour, oats (if using) and coconut (or chocolate chips).

Form into mini dough balls and freeze. 

Process coconut custard in your ice cream maker for 15-20 minutes. Remove to a freezer safe bowl, stir in frozen cookie dough bits, and eat! Or freeze to stiffen.