An ice cream cake made of cookie dough dreams: two layers of edible chocolate chip cookie dough and in between
An ice cream cake made of cookie dough dreams: two layers of edible chocolate chip cookie dough and in between vanilla ice cream.
The inspiration behind this beautiful beast of a cake comes from a local bakery in Richmond, VA. They sell a whole giant ‘cake’ that’s two parts cookie dough, filled with vanilla ice cream and topped with a thick layer of sprinkles. When I saw it, it reminded me of my whipped cookie dough pie and really, I’m game for anything that has edible cookie dough!
This cookie dough ice cream cake is based on that whipped cookie dough pie, but we’ve got two layers instead of one! Why do I love this one so much? It’s got all the properties of a delicious cookie dough minus the guilt/fear. We heat treat the flour so it’s safe to eat and there’s no egg: it’s lots of brown sugar and butter sweetened just right with vanilla and salted for balance. The heavy cream makes it light and fluffy and when frozen the layers go so well with ice cream. Little itty bitty chips of chopped dark chocolate cut through it all.
My daughter is obsessed with this ‘cake’. After it was long gone she kept asking for it and so I made another (you see two variations in the photos: one with a vanilla bean ice cream and a layer of chocolate ganache and another with moose tracks ice cream). Now she’s telling me she wants this for her birthday and it occurred to me that it would make an excellent birthday cake because the leftovers will never go bad!
Brown sugar: A must for a chocolate chip cookie, edible dough or baked. Light or dark is fine.
Granulated sugar: The finer this is the better, one of our goals in whipping this so long is to get most of the sugar granules to dissolve so that we don’t feel their texture in the frozen cake.
Flour: All-purpose flour. If you wanted to make it a little interesting you could toast some oat flour and see how that goes.
Salt & vanilla: For flavor, add as much or as little as you like bearing in mind that when things are frozen the taste is more muted.
Butter: No substitutes here unless it’s a vegan butter (don’t use oil!). If you wanted to brown the butter for more flavor you could but add a bit more before you brown it to compensate for moisture loss and let it chill before you begin beating it with the sugar.
Heavy cream: This is what fluffs up and smooths out the cookie dough. See below for a substitute.
Ice Cream: Your middle layer! Whatever you like will work it just needs to be a little soft when building the cake and able to freeze solid for slicing.
Chocolate: Something not overly sweet but not overly hard when frozen. If you are using regular sized chips I recommend chopping some of them to avoid having big tough, frozen chunks.
What kind of chocolate should I use for the ‘chips’ part of the dough?
Something that will taste good when frozen. Generally this means chocolate that isn’t so dark and chunks that aren’t so big (those will be harder to chew and break through). I like a semi-sweet chocolate here and to chop it finely so I’m not crunching on big hard pieces of chocolate.
What kind of ice cream should I use for the cookie dough ice cream cake?
Literally whatever you want. It does not matter! The cookie dough is rich so if that daunts you opt for something a bit more … vanilla.
What can I substitute the heavy cream with?
Use canned coconut milk, but refrigerate it first so that it will ‘whip’.
How can I make a dairy-free cookie dough ice cream cake?
See above and use a dairy-free butter and a dairy-free ice cream.
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Is there instructions for the variation with vanilla ice cream and chocolate ganache layer?
Hi Jenny! I didn’t write it up. Tbh I didn’t like the way the ganache froze in the center (texture was off). If you decide you’d like to do it anyway you can warm 3oz heavy cream and pour it over 3 oz finely chopped dark chocolate then stir until it’s smooth. It can go straight onto half of the first layer of ice cream but you’ll want to freeze it so it hardens before you add the second layer. Then proceed!
Hi, this looks amazing! I’m confused, though, did you use a springform pan with high sides, or a regular cake pan [the sides of which don’t seem high enough to account for the height of your cake here]? Hoping to make this soon, for a family dinner!
I used a cake pan, my 8″ cake pans are 3″ tall. Either will work really, just cover the bottom and sides with paper so you can pull or pop it out
Thanks for your answer! I ended up making it and it was soooo good!