Edible Cookie Dough (for ice cream!)

 Cookie dough ice cream is an absolutely quintessential, classic flavor, second perhaps only to chocolate or vanilla. Also, everyone knows cookie dough is a whole flavor unto itself. Cookie dough does not have the same flavor as baked cookies.

Chocolate chip cookies taste completely different from the unbaked sum of their parts. When chocolate chip cookies go into the oven for baking, the butter, chocolate, and sugar all melt into one cohesive final product. Baked cookies, while buttery and crispy, don’t have the same satisfying chew as raw cookie dough, nor do they retain the individual textures of all of their original ingredients.

When cookie dough is still in its raw (and perhaps superior) form, it tastes like butter, caramel, and fudge all at once. The crunch of unbaked sugar granules provides textural contrast to smooth, decadent butter, which is something that a cookie cannot do.

Unfortunately, if you eat the raw dough from a regular cookie recipe, you risk contracting E. coli and salmonella. Thankfully, this cookie dough is safe to eat raw, because it is egg-free and uses heat-treated flour (and don’t worry; making heat-treated flour is super easy!).

Not all edible cookie dough recipes can be used in ice cream. While some recipes might work, most will freeze too hard since they were formulated to be eaten at room temperature or refrigerator temperature, not freezer temperature. Using a regular edible cookie dough recipe for pieces mixed throughout ice cream will end up making an ice cream that feels like it has rocks in it. Tasty rocks… but still rocks.

This cookie dough recipe has been formulated to work perfectly in ice cream. Firm but not rock-solid while frozen, with teeeeeeeeeeeeny tiny mix-ins that melt on the tongue, this cookie dough recipe is perfect for mixing into freshly churned ice cream or topping onto the stuff straight from the carton.

Why make your own edible cookie dough? A few reasons:

1. It’s possible to make a batch as big or as small as you want. 
2. It’s extremely easy. Like, measure-and-mix-and-you’re-done easy. 
3. It’s delicious by itself at room temperature.
4. It’s easy to chew even while frozen in ice cream.
5. It’s got a short ingredients list.
6. It’s easily customizable. 
7. It’s difficult to find raw, edible cookie dough at the store.
   

Some ideas for delicious add-ins include mini chocolate chips (a classic!), rainbow sprinkles, dried cranberries and white chocolate, raisins and oats, crushed candy canes, and chopped peanuts. You could also experiment with different flavors by adding different extracts, spices, citrus zest, and so on.

So far, I’ve only tried white chocolate and macadamia nuts as mix-ins, but there’s really no limit to what you could add. My only recommendation is to keep your mix-ins small in size; you don’t want to break a tooth on a frozen chocolate chip.

What flavor of cookie dough do you want to try first? 

Edible Cookie Dough (for ice cream!)

Adapted from allrecipes

Ingredients  

• 1 cup flour 
• 5 tablespoons brown sugar 
• 6 tablespoons white sugar 
• 4 tablespoons (½ stick) butter, room temp 
• 1 tsp vanilla extract 
• 3 tablespoons milk 
• ½ tsp salt 
• ½ cup mix-ins (chocolate chips, nuts, etc.)

Directions

1.     Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and line a sheet tray with parchment paper.

2.     Evenly spread flour onto parchment-lined sheet tray. Bake for 5 minutes, then set aside to cool.

3.     Mix both sugars with the butter using a spoon. Then, mix in the vanilla, milk, and salt until well-combined. Don’t worry if it looks separated at this point.

4.     Sift in the cooled, heat-treated flour, and mix until no streaks remain.

5.     Finely chop mix-ins to less than a quarter of an inch in size, then mix into dough to evenly distribute. If this cookie dough is to be eaten by itself, then you’re done, so grab a spoon and enjoy! If you’re making cookie dough bites to use in ice cream, keep reading.

6.     Roll the cookie dough into a long rope about ½ an inch thick. Cut it into small bites about ½ an inch wide.

7.     Freeze the cookie dough bites in a single layer on a parchment-lined tray, then store in a sealed container in the freezer. Keep frozen until ready to add to ice cream.

I'm not sure how long it takes to spoil. I’ve never run into that problem, somehow. 😊