Ice cream can be enjoyed by the spoonful, wrapped in a soft brioche, resting on a crispy waffle… Or, enhanced by a fragrant cookie, strictly homemade.
Endless joy for the little ones and mouth-watering temptation for the older ones, the ice cream cookie is one of those desserts we can hardly give up. And it is for this reason that we have chosen to tell you, together with one of our food bloggers, the recipe for ice cream cookies.
Only this is not the classic preparation. To make it a tad more special, we added food coloring, 100% natural, made from fruit and vegetable extracts, to the list of ingredients.
And we did not spare ourselves! Besides the cookies, we also abounded in color in the ice cream – for a simple fior di latte can become original in no time.
Ingredients for 12 cookies
For the cookies (for each color)
- 100 g of Pastry Flour
- 40 g of powdered sugar
- 3 to 5 g of natural food coloring Gusto&Colore
- vanilla
- 40 g cold diced butter
To complete
- 1 whole egg
- 2 yolks
Preparation
First, devote yourself to making ice cream.
Pour all the ingredients, except the natural dyes, into a steel boule and mix, vigorously, with a hand whisk.
Place the bowl in a bain-marie and, stirring occasionally, let the temperature reach 85 °C. Turn off, transfer the mixture to a wide, shallow container, cover with clingfilm, and let cool completely.
Put the mixture in the refrigerator for 2 hours so that it becomes well chilled, and in the meantime, make the cookies.
Beat the whole egg and the two yolks in a bowl and keep aside. The resulting mixture (about 80 g of eggs) you need to divide it for 4 doughs.
Prepare, then, the first colored dough.
In a bowl, pour the flour, natural dye (your choice of color), sugar and a dash of vanilla powder. Mix well. Make a hole in the center of the dough and pour in the butter and 20 g of beaten eggs.
Knead it all together until you get a smooth dough.
In the same way, prepare the other 3 colored doughs as well. Wrap them all with plastic wrap and place them in the refrigerator, at least 40 minutes.
Turn on the oven and preheat it to 175° C. Roll out the colored doughs between 2 sheets of foil and cut out cookies, using a 7.5-cm-diameter round mold.
Place the cookies on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and bake for 12 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.
Take the ice cream mixture back out of the refrigerator, pour it into the ice cream maker, and set it to churn for about 30 minutes.
Divide the ice cream into 4 bowls: combine the natural dyes in each one and mix them into the ice cream, helping yourself with an electric whisk. The amount of dye varies depending on how intense you want to make the color of your ice cream. Our food blogger, to get the result you see in the photo, used 4 g of dye for 120 g of ice cream.
Now that the fior di latte ice cream is smooth and colorful, let it rest in the freezer for at least 1 hour.
After the necessary time has elapsed, you can assemble the ice cream cookies
Take a cookie, place the round mold you used to cut it out on top, and fill it with two scoops of well-chilled ice cream. Squish it well, trying to level it out, slip off the mold and transfer it to the freezer for 20 minutes.
Repeat for all 12 of your ice cream cookie bases. Close them with the second cookie, press firmly, and place one last time in the freezer for another 20 minutes.
Et voila! Colorful ice cream cookies, ready to be enjoyed with friends.
4 tips for making ice cream cookies
- If you need to speed up preparation time, you can use ready-made fior di latte ice cream and color it with the 4 food coloring agents. If you go this route, however, try to choose homemade ice cream, purchased from ice cream shops. Ordinary industrial ice cream, is designed to always remain soft and ready to use. And while this may be an advantage for ice cream to be enjoyed by the spoonful, it is not at all so for our cookies, which need a well-cold, firm ice cream to be formed.
- If you do not have an ice cream maker, you can make the ice cream this way: once you have prepared the mixture and let it sit in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours, transfer it to the freezer for 6 hours. Then, chop it up with a heavy kitchen knife (or ice molds) and blend it with a food processor until it has a creamy consistency like ice cream.
- To some of the ice cream, you can add chopped fruit following the color scheme: berries, cherries, green apple, strawberries, etc.
For the recipe, thanks to Elena of Con Un Poco Di Zucchero.
