Low Carb Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream

I decided to adapt a more complicated ice cream flavor to low carb: Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. The ice cream part is simple now that I know the secret ingredient that makes low carb ice cream soft and scoopable: glycerin. The tough part is making a low carb and gluten free chocolate chip cookie. Cookies are not easy to make low carb. But wait! I don’t have to actually bake the cookies. I just have to get the raw dough to taste like regular cookie dough.

I dug back into my Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Ice Cream & Dessert Book to find out how to make Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream, and as I expected, it’s just raw cookie dough that’s frozen into little chunks and added to vanilla ice cream. Chocolate chip cookies are basically flour, baking soda, salt, sugar, brown sugar, egg, butter, vanilla extract and semi-sweet chocolate chips. Baking soda reduces the acidity of the batter and raises the temperature at which the batter sets. I’m not baking them, so I suppose I can leave out the baking soda. I’ll use blanched almond flour in place of all-purpose flour. I have some Sugar Free Chocolate Chips I can toss in place of the semi-sweet morsels. Sugar will be replaced using my tried and true 28 drops of EZ-Sweetz plus 2 tablespoons of Truvia per cup of sugar swap. Wait! What about the freezing point depression of the raw cookie dough? Without all that sugar, it’s going to freeze solid. I’d better run some experiments later, but I’ve got a bigger problem: brown sugar.

I’ve tried brown sugar replacement products in the past. The flavor is good, but the sweeteners used cause stomach problems. Brown sugar is essentially white sugar with some of the molasses left in. I already know how to approximate the sweetness of white sugar, so I just need to add some molasses to get that brown sugar taste. Yes, I added molasses made from sugar cane to a low carb cookie batter recipe. Am I crazy? Yes, but that’s besides the point. One tablespoon of blackstrap molasses contains 11g of sugar. It’s not a terrible price to pay considering those carbohydrates are spread out over an entire batch of cookie dough. The original recipe called for ⅓ cup of brown sugar, so I added a teaspoon of molasses. That’s hardly any additional sugar per serving assuming all of the cookie dough goes into the quart of ice cream, which it won’t. However, the taste was significantly enhanced even with that small amount.

I made a batch of cookie dough and froze a small sample. It was hard as a rock. I added a tablespoon of vegetable glycerin to the batter and froze another sample. The new sample was moist and flexible. Success! I made a few other changes to the original cookie recipe. I increased the sweetness of the dough and doubled the vanilla extract from the original recipe. The flavors of frozen ingredients need to be amplified due to the numbing effect of the cold temperatures. The original cookie recipe was intended to be baked, not frozen and eaten raw.

The last trick I came up with was to enhance the cookie dough flavor by adding Da Vinci Cookie Dough Sugar Free Syrup to the dough and the ice cream itself. It gives the whole ice cream that extra “oomph.” You can leave it out, but I strongly recommend using it.

The cookie dough batter recipe will yield more than is needed. Save the excess and use it for a later batch or just eat it as-is. I guarantee that it won’t go to waste.

CAUTION: Consuming raw eggs may increase your risk of foodborne illness. Pasteurized eggs can be used in this recipe. Not every form of glycerin is fit for human consumption. For example, diethylene glycol is toxic and should not be consumed. Always verify the product is safe to use.

Ingredients

Cookie Dough

1 large egg
2 tablespoons Truvia
28 drops EZ-Sweetz
1 stick butter, unsalted, room temperature
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon vegetable glycerin
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons Da Vinci Cookie Dough Sugar Free Syrup
1 teaspoon blackstrap molasses
1½ cups blanched almond flour
Sugar Free Chocolate Chips

Ice Cream

Low Carb Sweet Cream Base
1-2 tablespoons Alpha Freezz Cookie Dough flavoring

Directions

1. Put the container for the ice cream including its cover in the freezer now. This serves two purposes: it keeps the container cold and it forces you to make sure there’s space in the freezer.
2. Cookie dough: Beat the egg in a large mixing bowl and slowly whisk in the Truvia and add the EZ-Sweetz until completely integrated and fluffy.
3. Add the butter and use an electric hand or stand mixer to cream the butter into the mix so that the result is a fluffy airy butter mixture. It’s very important to use butter that’s not too cold nor too warm. Too cold and it will be clumpy. To warm and it won’t be fluffy.
4. Add the salt, glycerine, vanilla extract, molasses, and Da Vinci Cookie Dough Sugar Free Syrup and mix.
5. Mix in almond flour until it’s completely integrated.
6. Fold in the low carb chocolate chips with a silicone spatula. How much to use is a matter of preference.
   
   
   
   
   Put the dough in the refrigerator to chill for at least 30‑60 minutes.
7. Ice cream: Follow the instructions for the Low Carb Sweet Cream Base. Add the flavoring after the mix has cooled, if applicable. Cover and chill in the refrigerator for a few hours.
8. Follow your ice cream maker’s directions for making ice cream. 
9. Take a chunk of the cold dough with your hands and roll it into a little ball. Try to be quick. The heat from your hands will start to melt the butter in the dough.
   
   
   
   Flatten the ball into a disc. Remove the ice cream from the ice cream maker using a silicone spatula into the container. Add a layer of ice cream and insert 3-4 cookie dough discs. Repeat until the container is full. Freeze until solid.