The summer after I graduated from high school I worked in a small local ice cream shop. The shop opened a month or two before I applied for the job and I’m pretty sure they were just desperate for anyone who was willing to learn how to make waffle cones and work minimum wage.
The building that housed the shop was originally a drive-through bank and hadn’t been remodeled to be anything else. With the bank safe behind us, we used the drive-through window both to take orders from walk-up customers and serve ice cream. I made waffle cones all day, served ice cream and worked the register all night. My clothes and my hair constantly smelled like sweet waffle cones, which sounds great…for about a day. It was a busy hot summer, especially the long summer nights that seemed to never end.
Despite the waffle cone making, one perk of working in the ice cream shop was that we were encouraged to taste all of the flavors, in order to provide accurate descriptions and recommendations to customers. Twist my arm. The ice cream we sold was from a local creamery and was absolutely delicious. They had a few interesting flavors unique to the creamery that were fun to sample and serve to customers. To this day, their cookies and cream ice cream is one of my favorites, with a combined vanilla and chocolate ice cream base.
Another favorite from that summer was the chocolate chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. Yup, chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream with a CHOCOLATE base! With that as an inspiration, I used the no-churn ice cream making method from earlier this summer, made a chocolate ice cream base, some eggless cookie dough and added some extra chocolate shavings to ensure that every bite was absolutely delicious. It worked fabulously, if I do say so myself. The result is creamy chocolate ice cream with chunks of edible raw cookie dough and pieces of chocolate that stay frozen in the ice cream but melt into sweet puddles in your mouth with every bite.
Often times chocolate chunks can get brittle or gritty in ice cream. This is usually because chocolate chips have a stabilizing agent in them. This helps them hold up in cookies or baked goods but proves problematic in frozen treats, as the stabilizer keeps the chocolate from melting in the ice cream or your mouth. To remedy this problem and create smooth, melt-in-your-mouth-not-in-your-ice-cream chocolate, we melt the chocolate, spread it thin and freeze it. The tempering process decreases the chocolate’s ability to harden and reduces the melting point, which allows the chocolate to freeze and harden in the cold ice cream but melt when it is engulfed in the warmth of your mouth*. So long, gritty, tasteless ice cream chocolate! We win this time!
I love this no-churn chocolate chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream even more than the original inspiration from our local creamery, and the best part is that I can enjoy it in my own home without smelling like a sickeningly sweet waffle cone ;)
No-Churn Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream
No-Churn Chocolate Chocolate Chip Ice Cream
2 cups cream, cold
1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
3 ounces dark or bittersweet chocolate
6 tablespoons dark cocoa powder
Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough (eggless)
½ cup butter
½ cup brown sugar
¼ cup sugar
½ teaspoon salt
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla
1 cup flour
2 tablespoons milk
½ cup mini chocolate chips
Make the Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough
In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream together butter and sugars until fluffy and light in color. Add salt, vanilla and flour and mix until the dough begins to form (it might be crumbly). Add the milk and mix together. At this stage it will start to look less crumbly and more like a regular cookie dough. Stir in the mini chocolate chips with a spatula or spoon. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate until you are ready to break it into the ice cream before freezing.
Make the No-Churn Chocolate Chocolate Chip Ice Cream
Melt the chocolate over the stove or in the microwave. Place a piece of parchment or wax paper on a baking sheet and spread the melted chocolate into a thin layer across the paper. Place the tray in the freezer until the chocolate has hardened. Once hardened, chop the chocolate into pieces.
In a large bowl, whisk together the sweetened condensed milk and cocoa powder until fully combined.
Pour the cold cream in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat on medium-high speed until stiff peaks form. Fold the whipped cream in to the sweetened condensed milk mixture until the mixture is evenly combined (this will take a while and a lot of folding). Once everything is combined, fold in the chopped chocolate from the freezer.
Line a loaf pan with parchment paper and pour half of the ice cream mixture into the pan. Break the chilled cookie dough into pieces evenly across the layer of ice cream. Pour the remainder of the ice cream mixture into the pan and crumble the rest of the cookie dough on top. Lightly stir the ice cream to cover the cookie dough completely. Freeze for at least 6 hours or overnight.
*I’m not a culinary expert, but I did my research. I learned about tempering chocolate for ice cream here.
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