COOKIES AND CREAM ICE CREAM

Ever since Christmas, there’s been a box of Candy Cane Jo-Jo’s waiting patiently in my freezer for exactly this purpose. Cookies and cream is one of my favorite ice cream flavors, and Candy Cane Jo-Jo’s (Trader Joe’s delectable holiday-season-only chocolate sandwich cookies with crushed candy cane bits mixed into the cream filling, like the glorious love child of an Oreo and a Thin Mint) are my favorite (storebought) cookies, so of course I had to try combining them. I used David Lebovitz’s Philadelphia-style (i.e., non-egg-based) vanilla ice cream recipe from The Perfect Scoop, leaving out the vanilla bean since I wanted the peppermint and chocolate flavors to be the main attraction, and followed Lebovitz’s advice in the back of the book for adding mix-ins. Needless to say, the finished product was glorious. I’ve mainly stuck to the fruit ice creams so far, because it gave me some pretext of wholesomeness, but now the genie’s out of the bottle. I’m intoxicated by the possibilities for other variations: regular cookies and cream, oatmeal cookie, chocolate-chip cookie, peanut butter cookie…heck, not just cookies, but candy, nuts—I could throw anything I wanted in there! I’ll try to restrain myself, but it’s going to be a struggle. Good thing we seem to have entered the too-hot-to-make-ice-cream-in-my-un-air-conditioned-apartment phase of the summer.

3 cups heavy cream, or 2 cups heavy cream and 1 cup whole milk
¾ cup sugar
¾ teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups crushed cookies

1. Pour 1 cup of the cream into a medium saucepan and add the sugar. Warm over medium heat, stirring, until the sugar is dissolved.

2. Remove from heat and add the remaining 2 cups cream, or the remaining 1 cup cream and 1 cup whole milk. Stir in the vanilla extract.

3. Chill mixture thoroughly in the refrigerator. Meanwhile, chill crushed cookies in the freezer.

4. Freeze in your ice-cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Quickly stir in the crushed cookies before transferring ice cream to a storage container.

Yields: About 1 quart
Time: 15 minutes, plus chilling and processing time
Leftover potential: Good