Happy Birthday to Me!: Oreo Ice Cream Cake

My birthday was two days ago and my dear friend Anisha knows the way to my heart. She surprised me with an ice cream cake...Oreo.

Maybe it's because I never had Oreos as a kid except for when they were swirled into ice cream to make Cookies 'n' Cream, or maybe it's the Cookies 'n' Cream that makes me nostalgic, but Oreo Ice Cream/Cookies 'n' Cream is one of my all time favorite flavors.

This cake was perfect. Cookies 'n' cream ice cream with a giant oreo in the middle. It was edged with vanilla frosting which was then covered with Oreo cookie crumbs. I loved it.

It certainly was a happy birthday to me -- ice cream cake after dinner and Richardson's ice cream for lunch before Harry Potter.

Recipe: Crazy for Cookies & Cream Ice Cream

I hate to admit it but it's been so long since I made ice cream :( I can give you the million and one excuses but this post could get very long so instead I'll tell you about how much I missed it. It was so rewarding once done to see my work of art and to see how excited the family was to see I was making a batch especially because it is their favorite kind, Cookies & Cream. 

Funny thing is it is not a flavor I have ever made for some reason and not one I would order but I was reading one of my favorite blogs recently, Beantown Baker (shout out to Boston bloggers), who shared a Cookies & Cream Recipe that sparked my interest. She has a great series called Friday Favs where she has her favorite bloggers providing guest posts every Friday....great idea and glad I caught this one. So a few Fridays ago while catching up on my favorite blogs I came across her Friday Fav featuring Pennies on a Platter who shared her recipe for this great Cookies and Cream Ice Cream and I immediately made it a must make because I knew the family would love it.

I stayed almost true to her recipe. I only had 5 eggs so I was minus an egg, I used Reduced Fat Oreos instead of Double Stuffed basically because I had them in the house and hey saving a few calories can't hurt, and one must when I make ice cream is cooling the final mixture over an ice bath before placing it in the fridge. I truly believe this final step along with straining the final mix helps to make ice cream nice and smooth. Because the mixture will still continue to cook when removed from the stove due to the heat itself, this cooling process allows the mixture to cool rapidly to stop the cooking process immediately. All in all this recipe is a keeper and I am so glad I stumbled upon it.

So I am back on the ice cream making wagon. It was so fun and realized what I have been missing. One reason I hate to make ice cream all the time is because I say to myself, well I will eat it all. But truth be told my husband and daughter ate it all and all I did was have a spoonful..well maybe two! 

Recipe follows after the photo journal...enjoy!

Egg yolks and sugar

Milk and cream

Strain and cool

Churn

Cookies

Mix

Freeze

Eat

Cookies 'N Cream Ice Cream

-adapted from Pennies on a Platter - makes 1 quart 

1 cup whole milk

2 cups heavy whipping cream

5 egg yolks

1/2 cup sugar

1 tbsp vanilla extract

15 Reduced Fat Oreo Cookies, roughly chopped

Bring the milk and cream to just under a boil in a sauce pan, over medium heat. (Bubbles will form around the edges.) Set aside.

Meanwhile, beat the egg yolks and sugar on medium high speed. Reduce the mixer to low speed. Slowly add the milk to the egg mixture until well combined. It is important to pour slowly to prevent the eggs from curdling.

Scrape the combined liquid back into the sauce pan and cook over medium-low heat. Stir constantly for about 3-4 minutes until thickened and coats the back of the spoon. Pour the liquid through a fine-meshed sieve into a bowl. Add the vanilla, cool over an ice bath, cover and chill in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours.

Pour the cream into the ice-cream machine and freeze according to the manufacturer’s directions. Spoon into a lidded freezer container then stir in the chopped cookies. Freeze 3-4 hours or overnight. 

Taste Testing: Popsicle/Klondike Products

Are you ready for another "What Husband Did With The Dry Ice?" Here is Photo Essay Number Two. The cool people at Klondike/Popsicle contacted Tina and I asking if we would be willing to test some of their products..."of course," we said!

Keep reading until the end for a chance to test your own ice cream novelties!

The ice cream came on Friday, September 5 in a
HUGE box that was probably 3x2x2 feet.
Clearly Ernie the pup was unphased.

I opened it to get my samples into the freezer and
was I glad that I had. The big cooler that was
holding the ice cream was cracked on the top.

The ice cream seemed still frozen, but
unfortunately for Husband, it looked
like a lot of the dry ice had melted away.

First things first. I pulled out the styrafoam cooler I got from our first sample of ice cream cupcakes and poured the dry ice. No boohooing for Kevin. The smaller cooler was brim to the top with dry ice, which means Kevin ended up with more than he had the first time he played with the dry ice from my ice cream samples.

When Kevin arrived home, what we really needed to do was clean because his parents were coming within hours...as I was folding laundry in the other room, I hear an excited Kevin and walk into the kitchen to see this:

Sink filled with dry ice. Wait...

That smoke/steam/whatever it is
looks pretty cool falling over the counter.

Yes, we need to zoom out. The floor is so covered
in dry ice "smoke" that Kevin has to quickly find Ernie
in the haze and pick him up so he doesn't suffocate.
(Ernie is fine, but probably wondering
why he moved in with us)

Ah, yes, it was all over the house...into the dining
room in this picture (Did I mention the in-laws
were due from Arizona in an hour and
the house clutter still needed to be picked up a bit?)

Here is our romantic, steamy
photo of the products in the dry ice.

So, how did we like the treats? Um, yum!

So to the left is an image of the Slim-A-Bear line. The package we got contained both French Vanilla and English Toffee. I was a little hesitant because these are a lower fat treat, with only a hundred calories, but Husband and I were pleasantly surprised with the taste. The French Vanilla were pretty much the original Klondike Bar on a stick and the English Toffee was a sweet surprise -- I loved the toffee ice cream with the chocolate shell that had little chunks of toffee in it. Husband and I shared tastes of each of the bars, because we knew dinner with in-laws was soon approaching and we didn't want to ruin our appetites -- oh, but we really easily could have. These were good! It was all we could do to keep from diving into the freezer. Later on in the weekend, Mother-in-law, who had mentioned she'd like to see some low fat treats on our blog, tested them was also pleasantly surprised. These are definitely on my running grocery list -- a great treat for when I am craving ice cream but still trying to recover from the fatty ice cream from I Scream 2008 (more to come on that in a future post...)

The other product we tested was Cookies & Cream Popsicle Ice Cream Shots. These were so much fun. While I chose to eat mine out of the carton with a spoon, Kevin put his in a beer stein (we don't have any shot glasses) and "drank" them down. The flavor was good. The ice cream (that's the white shots -- the brown ones were cookie pieces) was super frozen and less airy than regular ice cream and kind of squeaked in your teeth. It seemed much colder than regular, scoopable ice cream, but maybe this is because every time I took them from the freezer I dug in without letting them soften/melt a bit. I don't know if this is the Popsicle/Klondike treat I would choose from the freezer section regularly for myself (though I am sure it would be quite a hit with kids so I'll keep that in mind when I have 'em!) but I can see myself once in a while picking out these little shots to mix the ice cream consumption up a bit!

We'll look forward to Tina's follow up post on this subject -- she got some different products in the mail and I'm interested to see what she thought.

Bonus: Who invented the popsicle and at what age? Email us at scoopaliciousblog@gmail.com by Monday, September 22 for a chance to win a coupon for a free package of any Breyers, Popsicle, Klondike, or Good Humor Product.