Lovin’ Scoopful is “light” ice cream — think: Dreyer’s double churned or whatever they call it. Which is awesome, because as all of my friends know, I’m on this perpetual state of a diet, but I love me my white sugar. I found on their website a recipe for an ice cream cookie pie!! And for Pi Day (March 14, or 3.14, ha, get it…) I HAD to make a cookie pie. Well, it was my variation.

You’re supposed to start off with 20 chocolate wafers to make the crust but I couldn’t freaking find any at TJ’s or Ralphs so I picked up chocolate Teddy Grahams instead. It also said to pulse them into crumbs using a food processor but I decided to employ my mother’s preferred way instead. I shall call it the Ziploc bag and hammer approach.

I didn’t know how to convert 20 chocolate wafers into chocolate teddy grahams but I knew what a crumb crust should look like, so I just started off with this bag and probably ended up using a bit more than twice this much. I squatted down Asian-style and pounded this into mostly crumbs. I now know that you really want it ALL to be crumbs but the ziploc bags kept breaking so maybe double the bags if you can.

So then you take 4 tbsp of melted butter and mix it into the crumbs (I had to do this slowly since I didn’t know how much crumbs I should have had at this point). You want the crumbs to be able to pack together from pressure. Then you pack it into a buttered 9-inch pan:

Next time I think I’ll make more so I can line the walls of the pan with the crumbs too. You can use the tips of your fingers or the knuckles from your fist to pack it good. Bake it at 350 for 10 min, let it cool for 30, freeze it for 30.

The recipe online says to have the ice cream sit out for 10 minutes, but I’m not sure if that’s completely necessary; it’s so light that it’s really easy to mold already. I didn’t use ALL the ice cream from the carton because I wanted to save some I probably used like 75% of it. Put it in the freezer overnight and then YUMMY!!

It was SO GOOD!!! The ice cream is not too sweet and it went great with my crust!!

(sorry it’s blurry) You can put chocolate frosting on here too, and nuts, but I was too eager to eat up that I forgot to make chocolate sauce. What I did tasted great, and was SO easy. The ice cream is not heavy, has a great, smooth flavor and the cookie dough and cake pieces are actually kind of crunchy rather than soft and chewy which provides a really nice texture among the smoothness of the ice cream. My only beef is that I don’t think there was enough cake batter or cookie dough, but I’ll never be satisfied on that front, so…

Mmmmk but I wasn’t done yet. I had a pizookie on Saturday. For those of you who are unfortunate enough to never have had one of these, it’s a dessert from BJ’s Restaurant & Brewery where they bake a big cookie (or two diff kinds of cookies) into a pizza pan and top it with ice cream:

I wanted a repeat sesh with this ice cream. If you remember from a previous post, I got Baker Joe’s Triple Chocolate Cookie Dough for Christmas! I whipped it out, put a rather large ball of dough on a wax papered cookie sheet and threw it in the oven. It took 20 mins to bake all the way.

I let it cool for *just* a little bit and then eagerly took two scoops of ice cream and placed it on my cookie. I couldn’t believe how delicious it was!!!! I had baked the cookie really well too — it was crunchy on the outside, and nice and gooey on the inside.

Since the ice cream itself is vanilla, I would suggest flavorful toppings. There’s already a contrast between soft and hard with the ice cream + cookie dough and cake bits, so you can’t go wrong with using different textures of whatever you’re eating the ice cream with. Since this ice cream is highly pliable, it makes for a GREAT “project” ice cream, as you saw here — pies and pizookies are great, but I imagine ice cream sandwiches would taste really good with this ice cream, as well as ice cream log cakes and with brownies or even as part of a sundae! Another great classic way to eat this would be in a cone. I hate how you can’t stuff hard ice creams INto the cone; rather, you scoop the ice cream ONto the cone, so then you’re stuck with a dry cone. With this ice cream you can probably put it into a cone without breaking the cone itself!

Might I add (and this is where my vegetarianism comes in) that the Trader Joe’s butter I used in the cookie pie AND the Lovin’ Scoopful ice creams are both from cows that are NOT treated with rBST? NOT treated with rBST. None of those hormones in my food, please. Thanks. That, + REAL sugar + no high fructose corn syrup + “love” in the name + ice cream in the shape of hearts on their website = happy, happy Chloe.

Lovin’ Scoopful
http://www.lovinscoopful.com
Sold at grocery stores
I found their twitter!! @lovinscoopful
…and their Facebook page

YUMMMMMM. I <3 cookie dough! Just keep it in your fridge or freezer and when you want some cookies or have a last-minute party at your place, you have cookies in 20-25 minutes!! My showers are sometimes that long! Cookie dough is the perfect balance between store-bought and homemade from scratch; they taste SO MUCH BETTER than store-bought, are cheaper, are often softer, generally don’t have as many preservatives and ingredients AND you can eat the cookie dough (provided that the eggs are pasteurized of course). Of course your customizations are limited but if it’s a great cookie dough you won’t need to alter ingredients

I got triple chocolate chip cookie dough from Albie. Everyone loves them!!

Look at that gorgeous deep brown color! Underneath this smooth surface of dough you’ll find white and milk chocolate chips

There they are on the rack!! Smooth, warm, soft, and delicious. For a chocolate cookie, it’s not as gooey as one might hope. Your above-average chocolate chocolate cookie. I would like to tell you how they are a day later but.. none of them lasted that long.

• Taste: 8
• Crust and center moistness: soft, even after a few hours
• Value: present, great!
• Overall: Good choice for cookie dough, so don’t hesitate if you’re approached for a fundraiser!!

YUM!

Doesn’t that look delicious!!! Now that the whole Nestle cookie dough / E. coli thing is over (er, except for a select few people) Nestle has put their cookie dough back on the shelves with new labeling that clearly states that it is a New batch and not to consume raw cookie dough in bold letters:

^ Cookie dough that I am not supposed to consume raw

This is one of the easy ones where you just break the dough up into pieces:

And they weren’t kidding when they said JUMBO on the package.

The package said bake the dough in a 325-degree oven for 16-18 minutes, but I had to leave them in there for about 22 minutes, specifically because I did *not* want to consume raw cookie dough!! But the wait (impatient as I was, and everyone who knows me knows that I am NOT patient) was worth it!

Out of the oven golden brown and delicious and onto the rack. I know the whole appeal of getting the break-apart-and-bake cookies is ease, quickness and simplicity, but as you can see above, there are hard lines in the cookies. I would suggest that you round out the bricks of dough a little bit to achieve that “home baked” look; otherwise, it looks like you wanted square cookies. That, my friends, is something you will have to achieve another way. Except that I got lucky with our friend up there in the middle row, on the left, that’s a pretty square cookie. Well, so am I. Moving on.

Nestle is almost synomous with home baking. The chocolate chips are what they’re known for, and that alone is good enough for me to trust any recipe they put out. I wouldn’t have expected anything but near greatness from them. And that is what I got. I eagerly broke a cookie in half (come on, I’m on a diet, and one of these JUMBO cookies has 180 calories!) and bit into the cookie to find a crispy outside and a soft center. The cookie had a nice crunchy crust on the outside and as you can see from the photos there are plenty of their famous chocolate chips in each bite. Buttery, soft, flavorful… what else could anyone want in life?!

• Taste: 10
• Crust and center moistness: moist all around. crispy exterior, soft interior.
• Value: 12 cookies for $4.49, on sale for $3.50. You could definitely make these smaller though and still have good-sized cookies. and there would be more of them!
• Overall: It’s easy to make and tastes GREAT. I’d buy if I had no time to make my own. 10!