Peppermint Cookies ‘n’ Cream Ice Cream

This recipe for Peppermint Cookies ‘n’ Cream Ice Cream is a holiday delight packed with crunchy cookie pieces and speckled with peppermint candies. Made with a whole milk and heavy cream base, it’s a creamy treat worthy of a special occasion. Thank you to Dairy Farmers of America for sponsoring this post!

On my birthday this past year, I received an ice cream maker from Ryan. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while now, you know ice cream is my favorite food. By far. It takes the cake above all other food by a landslide, and just thinking about a cold, creamy bowl of ice cream is enough to make me feel a little giddy. My affinity for ice cream runs deep.

Naturally, after receiving a new ice cream maker, I became a little obsessed with making homemade ice cream. I’d love to blame this on the fact that I was in the third trimester of my pregnancy in the heat of the summer, but that would be a blatant lie. I want ice cream regardless of the outside temperatures and regardless of whether or not I’m growing a tiny human in my belly. I had a lot of homemade ice cream successes, most notably a batch of cookies ‘n’ cream that was jam-packed with so many cookies it put the store bought versions to shame.

Now that we’re smack-dab in the middle of the holiday season, my desire to make festive ice cream flavors has kicked into high gear. I’ve been experimenting with eggnog ice cream made with crushed Biscoff cookies (oh my gosh, so good), gingerbread ice cream (this one I need to work on) and, the recipe I’m sharing with you guys today, Peppermint Cookies ‘n’ Cream Ice Cream.

We’re talking tons of crunchy cookie pieces swirled into a refreshingly minty-vanilla ice cream base that’s so good even Santa would bypass a plate of cookies in favor of a bowl of this holiday magic.

Here’s everything you need to make it:

PET® Dairy Whole Milk
PET Heavy Whipping Cream
Peppermint Extract
Vanilla Extract
Candy Canes or Peppermints
Chocolate Sandwich Cookies
Eggs

There are a few non-negotiables for me when it comes to making homemade ice cream. Most important, for me, is using some combination of whole milk, heavy whipping cream or half ‘n’ half as the base. Icy ice cream is my biggest pet peeve so I’m not willing to chance it with ingredients that might yield a less-than-creamy ice cream base.

For this batch of peppermint cookies ‘n’ cream ice cream, I used a combination of farm-fresh whole milk and heavy whipping cream from PET® Dairy, which is farmer-owned and sources its milk from family farms in our region. One family farm in the Charlotte area that supplies milk to PET is Sand Hills Dairy, a third-generation dairy farm run by Scott and Kitty Mayer in Newberry, South Carolina. Started as Mayer Farms in 1949, the family has grown the farm and welcomed more family into their business along the way. Knowing that PET’s milks, creams and eggnogs I see on the shelves at the grocery store near me might have come from the Mayer Family is pretty darn cool and makes scooping up a bowl of this peppermint cookies ‘n’ cream ice cream feel a little more special!

Integrated into the milk and cream base is a bunch of finely crushed peppermints (or candy canes!) that give the ice cream a subtle pink hue and a whole lot of refreshing peppermint flavor. I used a food processor to crush the peppermints but if you choose to crush them by hand, make sure you really put some elbow grease behind it because you want them almost powder-like in consistency.

And then there’s the cookies. LOTS of cookies. I didn’t skimp on the cookies because cookies ‘n’ cream ice cream without a lot of cookie chunks might as well be plain ol’ vanilla if you ask me. I want the cookies to be the star and not fade into the background, ya know?

Once the ice cream is all churned up and beautifully thick and creamy, you’ll want to freeze it for 8 hours (or overnight) so it has time to harden just a bit and become perfectly scoopable. This is not the kind of ice cream that will come out rock-hard after 8 hours though. It has the kind of texture I like to refer to as “ice cream you immediately eat right after you bring it home from the grocery store” consistency which, for me, is my all-time favorite. It’s hard enough to maintain its shape when scooped but soft enough to taste almost whipped but still oh so creamy. I want some more of THAT in my life every day, please!

Regardless of whether it’s 70 degrees where you are or 30 degrees in your hometown, I hope this peppermint cookies ‘n’ cream ice cream makes your holiday season a little sweeter!