Mint Cookies ‘N Cream Ice Cream

My husband and I live in a house divided. He loves cookies and cream ice cream, while I would much prefer a bowl of mint chip. Maybe it’s for that reason that we barely buy ice cream.

But it is summer after all, so our lives would be incomplete without a nice cold bowl of ice cream as an after dinner treat (well, not really…by go with it). That’s where our handy dandy ice cream maker comes in.  By making our own ice cream, we can combine any flavors we want and make everyone in the house happy.

For this recipe, I just started with a basic vanilla ice cream recipe then added in a little green food dye to slightly tint it a “mint” color along with some peppermint extract. I ended up using about 3 drops of food coloring and 1 tbsp of peppermint. After that was whisked together, I poured it into the chilled bowl of the ice cream maker. I let the ice cream churn for about 20 minutes and once the ice cream actually started to resemble ice cream and not a melted milk shake, I tossed in some crumbled Oreo cookies and let it mix for a couple more minutes.

At this point, the ice cream is still too soft to serve, so I transferred it into a container (adding in some more crushed Oreos every few spoon fulls) to chill in the freezer over night. I always perfer to let it chill overnight, but really, it just needs a couple hours to set. If you are making ice cream for a specific event or meal, give yourself maybe 4 hours prior to make the ice cream and let it set.

I just happened to find these really fun bowls at the grocery store. I really wanted to serve them in waffle cones (my husband loves waffle cones), but this was the next best thing! It was the perfect vessel to serve our creamy and slightly minty ice cream loaded with lots and lots of Oreos. I have to say, my husband was especially pleased with this flavor because it ended up tasting a lot like his favorite Girl Scout cookie (Thin Mints)!

What ice cream hybrid would you make this summer?

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