Cookies and Cream Ice Cream

It's the first week of my second year of law school. Ice cream is a necessity.

For what it's worth, I didn't eat that whole thing in one sitting. I actually only ate a few spoonfuls.

If you don’t own an ice cream machine, I highly recommend you purchase one. I bought mine on sale at Costco over a year ago, and I haven’t regretted it. You can purchase it here although I recommend you wait until it goes on sale - I got mine for $30.

As soon as I bought my ice cream machine, I immediately bought this ice cream recipe book. It has the BEST recipes for an ice cream maker:

This recipe is the vanilla “Philadelphia style,” and I added cookies and cream because…well, why not? 

Here's what you need (adapted from The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz)...

3 cups of half and half*

3/4 cup of sugar

1 vanilla bean**

1/4 tsp of vanilla extract

16 oreo cookies, mashed

*The original recipe calls for 2 cups of cream and 1 cup of whole milk. I used half and half and thought it tasted just fine.

**Vanilla beans can be tough to find and they are weird. They look like this:

You split it in half lengthwise, and you'll see all the little seeds. Those are what you will want to scrape out - I found a spoon worked best.

Here's what you do...

1. In a large pot, heat 1 cup of your half and half (or cream if you're using the original recipe) and add the sugar, stirring until it dissolves. Also, add the seeds (I have no idea what they are actually called) from your vanilla bean.

2. Once, the sugar is dissolved, remove from the heat and pour into a large bowl. Add your other 2 cups of half and half and the vanilla extract. Cover and refrigerate until completely chilled (at least 2 hours).

3. When it is chilled, pour the mixture into your ice cream machine (make sure you freeze the bowl beforehand) and let it churn. It should only take about 20-25 minutes to look like ice cream. About 5 minutes before it's done, pour in your cookie pieces.

4. Enjoy!

A few scoops of this will make any day better...even one filled with things like Evidence :)