Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream Recipe

It was mid-January and it might have been the coldest day of the entire year when we made this gluten-free, dairy-free chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. While doing some reorganizing, we found our Cuisinart® Stainless Steel Ice Cream Maker that had been painted shut in a kitchen bench. After liberating the ice cream maker, we made green apple sorbet a few times before making this gfcf vanilla ice cream which quickly became cookie dough ice cream. The ultimate thumbs up came from my eleven year old who announced “You got it, Mom!” while sampling the just-made soft serve ice cream. )My eleven year old eats dairy and usually will not even go near dairy free ice cream. So, it was a huge compliment that she liked it too.) The ice cream base tastes like Crème anglaise or egg nog and it is quite hard to resist.

Cookie Dough:

Cream shortening and butter until light and fluffy. Add vanilla extract and ice cream batter. Add dry ingredients. Mix until combined. Form into small balls using a small ice cream scooper or a tablespoon. Refrigerate until hard.

Ice Cream Base:

Heat the milk with the vanilla until scalded–it should be steaming hot but not boiling.  Beat the egg yolks and sugar on medium speed with a paddle attachment until light and fluffy. It will look like pancake batter. Lower speed and add cornstarch. With the mixer still on low, slowly add the scalded milk to the egg yolk/sugar mixture. Pour the custard into a saucepan and cook stirring constantly over low heat until thickened. It should coat the back of a spoon when done. The custard should be between 170 degrees and 180 degrees. At 180 degrees you have to quickly transfer the custard to a cool bowl and chill over ice. Pour through a strainer and add vanilla extract. Cover, refrigerate for 1 to 2 hours or overnight

When cool, pour the mixture into an ice cream maker frozen freezer bowl and let mix until thickened. About 35 minutes. The ice cream will have a soft creamy consistency. To make cookie dough ice cream fold the cookie dough into the soft ice cream before hardening in the freezer. For harder ice cream, transfer to a container and freeze for about 2 hours. Remove from freezer about 10 minutes before serving.

NOTE: The secret, I have found, to making a good dairy free ice cream is to use several different types of milk. Mixing almond, rice and coconut milk gives you a creamy milk that has subtle rich flavors. When I swap out the butter to make a recipe dairy free I do the same thing. Instead of just using shortening I use spectrum shortening with a little earth balance spread. I like the buttery flavor of the earth balance but too much can give the dish a fake taste. I have found that for a cup of butter you can start with 2 Tablespoons of earth balance then fill the rest of the cup with spectrum shortening (14 Tablespoons). So, for half a cup of butter I would use 1 Tablespoon of earth balance and 7 Tablespoons of spectrum shortening.