This butterscotch cookie dough ice cream is the more flavorful union of classic cookie dough ice cream and butterscotch ice cream! I thought I was done with ice cream recipes for a while, but evidently not. My ice cream machine is proving to be a fantastic investment! I LOVE this brown butter butterscotch ice cream (butter pecan ice cream) I shared with you guys the other day so much that I decided to make another variation of it. So enter, Salted Butterscotch Cookie Dough Ice Cream! Sweet and salty, with decadent butterscotch flavor, and studded with chunks of chocolate chip cookie dough… this is as irresistibly addictive, bold and unpretentious as a summer treat can get. And it’s the most delicious cookie dough ice cream you’ll ever have! It’s a variation of the classic cookie dough ice cream, but with even more flavor. If you love butterscotch and cookie dough ice cream, and that sweet-salty flavor combo, this sweet treat is impossible to resist! The only way this ice cream could be better in my opinion is if it had chocolate fudge as well. So to fix that, I made chocolate hot fudge sauce, which you can drizzle over this ice cream to your heart’s content! 🙂 The base of this salted butterscotch cookie dough ice cream is almost identical to my brown butter butterscotch ice cream. Only difference is that there’s no brown butter here. You’re more than welcome to add brown butter too here if you like, but I wanted to keep the recipe relatively simple, since we are making cookie dough chunks here as well. But if you’d like to, here’s my comprehensive post on how to make brown butter.
Two components to this cookie dough ice cream
Salted butterscotch ice cream base
This is easy to make – just like any classic ice cream base made with egg yolks. The only difference here is the addition of a little butter (or brown butter if you choose to), and substituting white sugar with brown sugar. The eggs are whisked with melted butter and sugar until smooth and emulsified, and then the dairy is whisked in. Next, this custard is heated until it starts to steam or registers at 165 – 170°F. Then, the custard is allowed to cool down and chill. This is the salted butterscotch ice cream base that will be churned in your ice cream machine. BUT, don’t forget to add the cookie dough pieces too!
Edible cookie dough pieces
Holy cow, I love cookie dough! Eating raw cookie dough was a rite of passage for me when I started baking when I was little. That, in spite of all the voices I’ve heard over the years telling me that eating raw cookie dough wasn’t ahem… particularly nutritious. It used to be that raw eggs were not safe to be consumed, but I didn’t give a F, and just enjoyed raw cookie dough batter as a kid. Besides that though, raw flour is also a health hazard due to the potential of it carrying harmful bacteria. So with that in mind, the adult in me would like to emphasize the importance of making cookie dough pieces that are egg free, with flour that is safe to consume. The solution is using toasted flour (i.e. heat-treated flour).
How to heat treat flour for raw cookie dough
Heat treating flour is easy. Simply spread the flour on a baking sheet (I like to put a parchment paper on my baking sheet), then heat the flour in a preheated oven for about 10 – 15 minutes. That’s it.
What does heat treating flour do?
Raw flour is not safe to eat because of the possibility of E. coli. Thankfully, the kind of E. coli found in raw four is not heat resistant, which is why heating the flour to 350°F/180°C kills the bacteria, making it safe to eat. Once the flour is heat treated, make sure to sift it to get rid of any clumps that might form as it cools down.
Prepping edible cookie dough
The dough for this butterscotch cookie dough ice cream recipe is made similar to regular cookie dough, minus the eggs. And since you only need to make a small amount, I just use a spatula and spoon to mix the ingredients. You can use any kind of chocolate for the chocolate chips in the dough. However, if you’re using actual chocolate chips, make sure to chop them a little before adding them. Remember, the chocolate here is going to be frozen, so smaller chocolate pieces spread better through the cookie dough. Having whole chocolate chips isn’t ideal for this cookie dough ice cream. The edible cookie dough is then spread out on parchment paper and frozen till completely hardened. Once hardened, you can chop the cookie dough block into small pieces. Chopped cookie dough can be added to the ice cream during the last few minutes of churning. My ice cream churner doesn’t have enough space to churn with the cookie dough pieces, so I removed the ice cream container while the ice cream had a soft-serve consistency and quickly folded in the cookie dough pieces by hand. Now the salted butterscotch cookie dough ice cream is ready to be frozen.
Flavor variations of cookie dough ice cream
Lots!
My favorite – layer a generous amount of hot fudge sauce (at room temperature), while transferring the ice cream into a container from the churner. Alternate the layers of ice cream and fudge sauce and swirl them in. Instead of salted butterscotch ice cream, you can make classic vanilla ice cream base for a classic cookie dough ice cream. How about an adult version of this ice cream with a shot of bourbon when churning it? Substitute 2 tbsp of heat treated flour with 1 tbsp cocoa powder, to make chocolate cookie dough ice cream. Want to go nuts? Pecans, walnuts or hazelnuts are all great choices. For an even more indulgent ice cream, add some chopped peanut butter cups!
But if you like it as is, you can still drizzle some delicious hot fudge sauce on top before serving. Maybe even some whipped cream too? If you’re going to indulge with a decadent ice cream this summer, you might as well make it worth your while (and your taste buds)! 🙂
Other ice cream recipes you’ll love
Creamy chocolate ice cream Mint chocolate chip ice cream Rainbow ice cream slice (no churn) Strawberry shortcake ice cream Date and tahini ice cream Ube ice cream Creamy lemon ice cream
Special equipment I used for this recipe
ICE CREAM MAKER – An inexpensive freezer bowl ice cream machine will be perfect for the average cook/baker. I have used & recommend this Cuisinart model. If you do constantly make ice cream in summer, then I would recommend investing in an ice cream maker with a built in compressor. These machines do not require to be pre-chilled and you can make many batches of ice cream over and over again. I currently own, and recommend this Cuisinart model. THERMOMETER – An inexpensive Cooking thermometer or a more expensive instant read thermapen.
