Strawberry Cookie Dough Ice Cream

Date Completed: 6/6/2021

Oh, what a happy day it was when I made this fabulously decadent Strawberry Cookie Dough Ice Cream! Fittingly, the recipe lives in the Oh, Happy Day! chapter of the Joy the Baker Cookbook.

You know how chef’s have a signature dish? If I was a chef, I would make this ice cream my signature dish. It’s SO happy! Delicious custard full of strawberries and cookie dough? Count me in.

It’s also fitting that the recipe comes from the Oh, Happy Day! chapter because it takes about a day (or more) start-to-finish.

I actually made this ice cream with a friend years ago when I first purchased the cookbook. I’ve been intermittently thinking about making it again ever since. The opportunity came a few days ago as a way to celebrate a long weekend and the beginning of summery weather.

Let me tell you about it.

It all begins with egg yolks and sugar. Joy tells us to whisk them until they are thick and pale. The benchmarks for thickness and paleness are not 100% clear, so I stopped at the point of the second photo. More accurately, I stopped well before that and let Garrett take over because my arms were sore from a workout.

Meanwhile you heat up milk and honey on the stove until that mixture almost simmers. It took a bit of stirring to break up the honey, but it eventually melted into the milk.

Then the nerve-wracking part where you do everything in your power not to scramble the egg mixture accidentally! Slowly pour the hot milk into the egg yolks while constantly whisking. That gets dumped back into the saucepan to cook on the stove.

Joy provided two benchmarks for this final custard-cooking step: (1) the custard holds a line on the back of a spoon and (2) the eggs have just started to smell like they are cooking. The second benchmark led me to this question: But what do eggs smell like when they’re cooking?! I honestly still couldn’t tell you, but I pretended to notice a different smell.

I’m pleased to report that we found no bits of scrambled egg when we poured the cooked mixture through a sieve. Success! After a final addition of heavy cream and vanilla, the custard went into the fridge covered until it cooled completely (a few hours).

The cooling period allowed plenty of time for mixing up the edible cookie dough - yum! I also got to break my stand mixer back out!

Cue the obligatory boring photo of a flour mixture. I should really just have a stock image to use each time. Oh well! Dry ingredients are whisked up. Butter and sugar are creamed. Vanilla and a few tablespoons of milk are added to the butter. Dry ingredients are slowly incorporated!

I messed up this next part. I intended to buy “mini morsel” chocolate chips, but I purchased regular “morsels” instead. You know, a real disaster scenario. I guess I’ll just have to make this ice cream again to test which chip size is better?

Once I mixed in the inappropriately-sized chocolate, the dough chilled in the fridge for a little.

Technically the recipe calls for the cookie dough to be rolled into marble-sized balls. I admit I didn’t have the patience to roll the dough, so I just broke it off into little chunks. I do not regret this decision at all!

The frozen strawberries have to thaw just slightly before you can chop them up. I attempted to chop them completely frozen and quickly realized that would not work.

Then came the debut performance of my brand new ice cream maker! Of course, I referenced the America’s Test Kitchen equipment ratings/rankings and selected their “best buy” option. I’d have to open an ice cream making side business to justify their $400 #1 pick.

I found the whole churning process beyond mesmerizing! I ended up watching the progress for the entire 20 minutes because it was so cool! And it all happened so fast!

The recipe calls for the strawberries to go in a few minutes before the end of churning. The cookie dough pieces get mixed in once the ice cream is transferred out of the machine and into the freezer container.

The last step is to freeze the ice cream until it firms up even more!

Taste Report:

I mean it has cookie dough and strawberries inside honey vanilla custard. Is there any possibility that this isn’t delicious?

I was impatient to taste on the day we made it, so my first scoop was really more of a melty mess. On day 2 the ice cream had actually frozen and it was divine! I loved the big chunks of cookie dough and the bright pieces of strawberry.

I may chop the strawberries even a little smaller next time so that they don’t need to be chewed. The big chunks were a little cold on the teeth! Maybe even fresh strawberries cooked into a sauce that’s swirled throughout?

I’m also super curious to try this with the mini chocolate chips. I was pleasantly surprised by the regular sized ones, though. They do provide that extra dose of chocolate! It probably wouldn’t be bad to have a few plain chocolate chips floating around as well outside the cookie dough.

I’m honestly just sitting here coming up with every excuse for “testing” this recipe again.

I must also admit that I had a serious photoshoot with this ice cream. I can’t even count the number of photos I took. When you have a beautiful subject, everything turns out well!

Mess Report:

The mess report! This recipe actually resulted in two rounds of messes. The first coming from the custard/cookie dough. The second coming from the actual churning equipment. Each round of dishes was still fairly small, but I can’t lie that this recipe involves a serious time commitment.

That said, you can find me in the kitchen making this over and over and over.

Now I think I’ll have another scoop!