Cookies and Cream Ice Cream
A vanilla custard ice cream churned with chunks of crushed chocolate sandwich biscuits, chilled and frozen for 8 hours.
Photograph credit: Cookies and cream by BrokenSphere · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons · this resized copy is shared under the same licence
Before You Start
Break the biscuits by hand into large pieces.
Add the biscuits at the very end of churning.
Chill the custard completely first.
Making Cookies and Cream Ice Cream
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Heat the cream, milk and vanilla bean paste to a simmer. Take off the heat and leave for 5 minutes.
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Whisk the egg yolks, sugar and salt until pale. Reheat the cream until steaming, whisk a ladle into the yolks, then tip back into the pan.
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Cook over low heat, stirring, to 80°C / 176°F until the custard coats a spoon. Strain and chill for 4 hours.
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Churn until thick, adding the broken biscuits for the last minute.
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Freeze in a lidded container for 4 hours.
Related guide: Prep, cook and total time.
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Why the Method Works
Many homemade batches fail on a single point, which is the cookies going soggy. A biscuit mixed into a wet ice cream base slowly absorbs moisture and turns into a dull grey paste. The fix is to add them last, in large chunks, while the ice cream is still churning, and to freeze it quickly, so that they stay crisp and snap.
Start with a very good vanilla custard. Heat the milk and cream with a split vanilla pod, whisk the egg yolks with the sugar, combine them and cook gently until the custard reaches 80°C / 176°F and coats a spoon. The vanilla needs to be pure and strong, because the chocolate biscuits have a strong flavour of their own. Chill the custard for at least 4 hours until completely cold.
Break the biscuits by hand into pieces about the size of a coin. Pulverised biscuits dissolve into the ice cream and turn it grey, while large pieces keep their crunch and stay recognisable. Include the cream filling, which streaks the base with white.
Churn the custard until it has the texture of soft-serve, add the biscuits in the last minute, and pack into a lidded container. Freeze for 4 hours before serving. Take it out of the freezer 10 minutes before scooping.
Leftovers, Reheating and Keeping
Keeps in the freezer for 2 weeks.
Good With
- Brownies
- Hot fudge sauce
- Wafer cones
- Cold milk
Questions and Answers
How long does Cookies and Cream Ice Cream take to make?
40 minutes of preparation and 15 minutes of cooking, plus 8 hours of Steeping, chilling and freezing, so allow 8 hours 55 minutes from start to finish. The recipe serves 8.
Cookies and Cream Ice Cream Nutrition Facts
Per serving, an approximate calculation from the ingredient list. Treat it as a rough guide: part of the energy comes from foods, or weights per item, with no recorded source. How the figures are worked out.
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Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published ; last changed .
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