With summer approaching, ice cream becomes more of a dessert staple (except at my place – I eat ice cream all year round, even if there is a foot of snow outside). I’m always craving chocolate chip cookies, so I opted for some Spiced Cookie Dough Ice Cream – vanilla ice cream packed with cookie dough bites spiced with cinnamon and clove. And I’m talking packed full. When I eat cookie dough ice cream, I want cookie dough ice cream. I don’t want vanilla ice cream with only five pieces of cookie dough. I want every bite to scream cookie dough. I even made extra cookie dough bites to sprinkle on top after scooping.

This recipe came from the book Spice Dreams where different spices liven up your typical ice cream flavors. For this recipe, the ice cream base sounded boring. It was vanilla ice cream but without the vanilla bean. Later on, I understood why. The ice cream is plain enough so the cookie dough shines. Now I’ve heard of pairing up chocolate chip cookies with cinnamon, but clove?! And 1 whole tsp too (in the original recipe. I cut it down to make 1 pint). That’s a lot of clove, but I must trust the recipe. Oh. MY. This is the best cookie dough I’ve had by far. In fact, I made chocolate chip pancakes the next morning and added cinnamon and clove. I’m telling you – the cinnamon and clove make a HUGE difference.

The cookie dough is not made with eggs, so you don’t have to worry about eating it raw. In fact, I may just make this cookie dough in the future without the ice cream.

I made this ice cream all by hand, thanks to David Lebovitz. You really don’t need an ice cream maker (although they do make things a little easier). The hardest part about this method is remembering to take the ice cream mixture out every 30 minutes or so and whisk it to break up any ice crystals. Since you are adding in the cookie dough, you have to make sure you pull the ice cream out when it’s almost frozen and stir in the dough.

Source: Spice Dreams