Still have Girl Scout cookies around the house? Chop them up and turn them into Thin Mint ice cream!
One of the girls at my skating rink was selling Girl Scout cookies. I couldn’t turn her down, so I ordered a box of Thin Mints and a box of Samoas. A month after everyone else had received their cookies, she finally brought mine in. I’m not sure what happened, but she forgot my Samoas (I never did receive them). So she only charged me for one box of Thin Mints.
Although I can easily polish off a box of these seasonal cookies, I opted to feature them in a dessert. Both my husband and daughter were strongly hinting that we were running out of ice cream, so I made some homemade Thin Mint ice cream.
I used my trusty Jeni’s ice cream base and added peppermint extract for a nice minty background. Then I chopped up some cookies and layered them on top of the ice cream and repeated until my ice cream container was full.
As expected, this ice cream was super creamy and a delight to eat. The thin mint cookies got a bit soft but you can always garnish a scoop or two with full-sized thin mint cookies. I’m sure we’ll be making this ice cream every Girl Scout season.
Thin mint ice cream
Ingredients
- 2 cups whole milk divided
- 1 Tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon cornstarch
- 1 and ½ ounces (3 Tablespoons) cream cheese, softened
- 1/8 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 1 and ¼ cups heavy cream
- 2/3 cup sugar
- 2 Tablespoons light corn syrup
- 1 teaspoon peppermint extract
- ~10 Thin Mint cookies chopped
Instructions
- In a small bowl, mix 2 Tablespoons of milk with the cornstarch to make a slurry. Set this aside. Reserve the remaining milk and keep it separate.
- In a large bowl, mix together the cream cheese with the sea salt until well combined. Set a fine mesh sieve above it and set aside.
- In a medium sized saucepan, heat the cream, remaining milk, sugar and corn syrup on medium to medium-high heat until boiling. Allow the mixture to boil for 4 minutes.
- Take the saucepan off the stove and very carefully add the cornstarch/milk slurry. Mix until everything is well incorporated and put the pan back on the stove. Allow the mixture to come back to a boil and until the liquid becomes slightly thicker, about 1 minute.
- Turn off the stove and pour the liquid through the sieve into the large bowl with the cream cheese/salt. Add the vanilla and mix well until everything is fully incorporated.
- At this point, you have two options. You can either set the ice cream over an ice bath (pour the contents into a large zip-top bag, seal it shut and place it over a large bowl with ice cubes), or put it in the refrigerator for several hours or overnight.
- Once the mixture is completely cool, churn it in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's directions. Fold in the chopped thin mint cookies by hand. Or, you can spoon a layer of ice cream in your container, then add some chopped cookies and repeat until the container is full.
- Pour the ice cream into a container and set it in the freezer until it has hardened (at least 4 hours).