cookie dough nice cream

Plan ahead and stock your freezer with frozen bananas and DASH cookie dough bites and you could be mere minutes away from eating cookie dough nice cream at all times! In this recipe, you can choose between chocolate chip cookie dough or sprinkle sugar cookie dough. Chocolate chip is my favorite, but I like them both. The uninitiated may wonder, what is nice cream? Bananas, basically, but don’t stop reading! When frozen and blended, bananas turn into a sweet, creamy delight reminiscent of ice cream, but without all the bad stuff. I find the flavor to be very tasty, and fairly neutral; I’m not even the biggest fan of bananas, personally.

a note on frozen bananas: You may be able to purchase bagged frozen bananas, but it’s much more economical to freeze them yourself. Just buy a big bunch of bananas and let them get ripe (yellow with some brown freckles is ideal, but definitely not green, and not super brown). Peel and slice the bananas about an inch thick and arrange them on edge on a baking sheet (setting them on edge keeps them from sticking). Leave in the freezer until frozen and then transfer to an airtight container or zippy bag. The bananas will keep well for months in the freezer this way and be ready when you want a treat.

Recipe inspired by Kirrily Edwards.

ingredients:

makes enough dough bites for 2 servings, and enough nice cream for 1 (but you can easily double it).

For the dough:

• 1/2 cup oat flour
• 1 1/2 tbsp sugar or 1-to-1 sugar substitute
• 2 tbsp natural cashew butter
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp almond extract
• a pinch of salt
• 2 1/2 tsp skim milk or unsweetened almond milk
• 1 tbsp rainbow sprinkles or mini chocolate chips (regular size chips won’t work as well)

For the nice cream:

• 200 g frozen banana slices (fills a 2 cup measure to about the 1 1/4 cup line)
• 1/4 cup skim milk or unsweetened almond milk (see note below)
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 tbsp rainbow sprinkles or mini chocolate chips

prep the cookie dough ahead of time:

Have a small cookie sheet ready. Combine the flour and sweetener in a small bowl and stir with a spoon to combine. Add the nut butter, extracts, and milk and stir with the spoon. When it becomes to difficult to stir, use your hands to knead in any remaining dry flour until the mixture is completely uniform. Add your choice of sprinkles or chocolate chips and knead those in too until more or less evenly distributed. Gather all the dough together in your hands and press into a ball.

Pinch off a small amount of dough and shape roughly into a ball. Set on the cookie sheet and repeat with the rest of the dough, spacing the balls apart so they don’t touch one another. Err on the side of smaller than you think–it’s easy to make them too big. To give you an idea, I get about 48 balls out of this batch of dough. Remember, you want to get a bite of nice cream with the cookie dough! Freeze the balls for at least 30 minutes and then transfer to an airtight container. They will keep well in the freezer for months this way.

make the nice cream:

a note on adding liquid: Depending on the power of your food processor or blender, you may have to add a little more liquid to make it blend. Start with 1/4 cup and add a tbsp or so at a time from there. The line between smoothie and nice cream is a thin one, and determined mostly by the consistency of the mixture, in my opinion. It all tastes the same though, so while a nice thick mixture is ideal, take care of your machine! The nice cream will still be good even if it’s more like a smoothie.

In a high-powered food processor or blender, combine the bananas, milk, and vanilla. Blend until no more lumps of banana remain. Transfer to a bowl and stir in a half batch of cookie dough bites and then sprinkle the extra chocolate chips/sprinkles on top. If you follow the amounts in this recipe, you will wind up with a total of only 1 tbsp chocolate chips/sprinkles, which means keeps you within a single serving of sugar, but still feels abundant! Enjoy your nice cream immediately. A double batch of nice cream should also fit fine in most food processors/blenders if you are making it for two.