Oatmeal Raisin Cookie Ice Cream Recipe!!! (or how I gained 5 lbs over night)

Back on May the 4th, we went to a comic book store for Comic Book day.  We had time to kill before we were allowed in and went to check out the ice cream store that was next to them.  Nate got Oatmeal Raisin Cookie Ice Cream and hasn't stopped talking about it since.

This week I figured I could be the coolest and try to recreate it.  I succeeded.  He told me it was BETTER than the ice cream shop.  Score one for mom! 

This ice cream is so good. You have the cinnamon of the ice cream and then the hunks of cookie. If you are an anti-raisin person, I still like you.  Just omit them from the recipe.  This recipe DOES call for planning. I baked my favorite oatmeal raisin cookies for this recipe.  You can do that as well, OR buy cookies. Either way, you need to have the cookies ready before the ice cream. The cookies are cut and frozen before being added to help keep them from falling apart in the churner.  I have a Cuisinart 2 quart Ice Cream maker and LOVE it.

My FAVORITE oatmeal cookie recipe is the Quaker Oats Vanishing Oatmeal Raisin Cookie Recipe.  If you don't want extra cookies, I would half the recipe.  I don't even really understand what I just wrote.  Who wouldn't want extra cookies?  Go ahead and make the whole recipe and eat one, or four, while they cool.  They have oatmeal, raisins, and eggs.  You could probably eat them for breakfast they are so healthy.

I have mentioned it before, but if you don't use a cookie scoop, you should.  A scoop helps to yield in uniform size cookies.  This is awesome for baking purposes because they cook at the same rate.  Plus, my kids like to be the "floppers".  V is a pretty awesome flopper.

After the cookies are cool, I grabbed about 10 and cut them into pieces.  This is where uniformity comes in. I did each cookie across in 3 or 4 pieces, turned the knife, and sliced across again 3 or 4 times. That way you get nice little squares.

Grab the squares, put them in a freezer safe container, and pop them in the freezer until they are ready for the ice cream. You should probably sample a square here...you know...quality control.

Time to make the ice cream!  (ice cream recipe adapted from The Live-In Kitchen)

Ingredients:

• 2 cups whole milk
• 1 cup sugar (or 1/2 cup sugar and 1/2 cup maple syrup)
• 1 1/2 to 2 teaspoons cinnamon (to taste)
• 2 cups of heavy whipping cream
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon coarse kosher salt

Directions:

1. Pre-fill the sink with cold water and ice.
2. In a medium saucepan add the milk, sugar, and cinnamon.  Whisk them together and heat over medium heat until the sugar is dissolved. 
3. Remove from the heat and add the heavy whipping cream, vanilla, and salt.  Stir.
4. Take the pan over to the sink and hold it in the water being careful not to get water in the milk mixture. SLOWLY and carefully stir the milk mixture until it cools down.
5. Remove pan, dry off bottom, cover with plastic wrap, and stick the pan in the refrigerator for AT LEAST an hour, up to overnight  You need the base to be COLD.
6. Pour the base into your ice cream maker and process it according to your makers instructions. Mine was about 15-20 minutes. 
7. Add cookie pieces from the freezer and process it for a couple more minutes.

 At this stage I just turned off the machine and scooped the base into a big freezer safe bowl and stirred in the rest of the cookie chunks. My poor maker couldn't handle all the cookies in the bowl.

Ice cream makers are AWESOME, but it comes out like a soft serve typically. I like to be able to scoop it, so I threw the bowl (covered) into the freezer for another hour.

I ended up with perfection.

Enjoy!  S'mores ice cream coming later this week!