Maple Walnut Cookie Dough Ice Cream

I love May for so many reasons; watching the tulips waving from their beds, receiving Mother’s Day construction paper cards, celebrating seven years of married bliss, being excused from housework to garden, attending weddings…Oh, that reminds me, I have a wedding coming up and a cake to make.

It always seems like such a fun idea when I agree to make a cake; it is usually on a dismal January day, when the month of May and its weddings seems like a distant fantasy and I have no recollection of those panicky days leading up to ‘cake day’. Heck, why not, I tell the client, it will be fun! I wish this time was different, but as I stockpile butter and eggs and sketch the anatomy of the four-tiered beauty, I’m feeling the familiar butterflies and am wishing it was over already! Oh well, don’t worry about me. I’ll find a way to channel my stress! At least the client is a friend, and a polar opposite to a Bridezilla–she a sweetheart.

Enough about Project Wedding Cake–I also love May because it ice cream time!
OK, so this bonjour!-to-summer ice cream is amazing. Is actually Maple Ice Cream with Maple-Walnut and White Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. Enough of a mouthful?

When Julie professed her love of these Maple Walnut White Chocolate Cookies and sang the praises of the dough itself, I knew I wouldn’t be waiting long to try them. A bottle of homegrown maple syrup from our families sugar shack outing was calling from the fridge and fortunately I had just stocked up on white chocolate chips from Bulk Barn. (A first in Quebec, Bulk Barn is my latest and greatest culinary discovery. Think Costco meets Ares meets Anatol.)

I don’t think it was coincidence that I also had a half a batch of Ben & Jerry’s Sweet Cream ice cream base in the fridge. The other half had already been made into strawberry ice cream and consumed entirely, but the rest was awaiting a destiny of cookie dough ice cream.
So I chunked up some cookie dough with a knife, spread it out on a tray, and threw it in the freezer to freeze solid. Then I added 2 tablespoons of pure maple syrup to the ice cream base, churned it ’til it was hard and folded in the cookie dough right at the end. A few hours in the freezer and it was ready!

It was way better than the B& J original cookie dough ice cream–and I am a huge fan. I love nuts in ice cream so the walnuts made me happy. It was just nice to have a maple ice cream that didn’t taste artificial.
You could leave out the white chocolate chips as maple cookie dough ice cream is pretty spectacular as it is.

And if you don’t have an ice cream maker, or *gasp* ice cream just isn’t your thing, try a batch of Julie’s cookies. They will rock your world! Recipe at the bottom of the post.

Maple Walnut Cookie Dough Ice Cream with White Chocolate Chips

1/2 recipe raw Maple Walnut Chocolate Chip Cookie dough (recipe below)
1 recipe Maple Ice Cream Base (recipe below)
White Chocolate chips to taste

Have a 1 quart sized Tupperware container chilling in the freezer, ready to receive the ice cream.
Chop the cookie dough into bite-sized pieces, place on a tray, cover and freeze.
Prepare the ice cream maker and add Maple Ice Cream Base. Freeze following the manufacturers instructions until quite stiff.
Add the chopped cookie dough and a few handfuls of white chocolate chips. Continue freezing until the ice cream is ready. Scoop into your chilled container and place in freezer to freeze further. Enjoy licking the dasher of the ice cream maker–this is one of the fine things in life.
Enjoy your ice cream!

Maple Ice Cream Base
adapted from Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream & Dessert Book

2 large eggs
3/4 cup sugar
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup milk
1/4 cup pure maple syrup

Using a hand held blender, whisk the eggs in a mixing bowl until light and fluffy. Whisk in the sugar, a little at a time, then continue whisking until completely blended, about 1 minute more. Pour in the cream and milk and whisk to blend. Finally, add the maple syrup and whisk thoroughly.
Chill completely before churning.

Go ahead and bake off some to eat, too.

Maple Walnut White Chocolate Chip Cookies
From Dinner with Julie

1/4 cup butter, softened
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup pure maple syrup (not flavoured pancake syrup)
1 large egg
1 tsp. vanilla or maple extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
3/4 cup each white chocolate chips/chunks and chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350°F. In a large bowl, beat the butter, brown sugar and maple syrup until well combined — the mixture will have the consistency of wet sand. Add the egg and vanilla and beat until smooth. Add the flour, baking soda and salt (stir them together first only if you want to) to the butter-sugar mixture and stir by hand until almost combined; add white chocolate and walnuts and stir just until blended. It may seem dry at this point – I always find it easiest to get in there with my hands toward the end. Drop spoonfuls of dough (or roll rough walnut-sized balls) about 2” apart on a cookie sheet that has been sprayed with nonstick spray. Flatten each a little with your hand, just to give them a head start. Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until pale golden and set around the edges but still soft in the middle. Transfer to a wire rack to cool. Makes 20 cookies.