Gingered carrot cookie dough in cream cheese ice cream

This week's recipe was chosen by Natalia of Gatti Fili e Farini. She's got the recipe--go say hello! I had never noticed the recipe in the book, but it sounded intriguing. Even more intriguing, because I was away on a business trip and had to wait awhile before I got home to look at the recipe. I love carrots and coconut in any form, so I knew I was going to love these. I don't like raisins, though, so I left those out, and replaced the pecans with cashews. The only thing I was worried about was the possible homeliness of these cookies. There was no picture, and they didn't sound pretty. I don't know what's wrong with me, but I don't like an ugly cookie. I just have to doctor it up somehow, as I did with the Dulce de leche duos from last year. I thought about a cream cheese filling, but word on the TWD discussion board said they were a bit lumpy for that. So, I thought about making a cream cheese ice cream and putting the crumbled cookies in that. Then I tasted the cookie dough...

Do you ever eat the raw cookie dough? Do you ever like it even more than the baked cookies? Yes and yes for me. I always try everything I bake before I cook it, and I usually prefer it to the baked version. Or maybe it's that I feel slightly nauseous by the time things come out of the oven. I've always been like this, and I can remember eating huge gobs of whatever my mother was making while her back was turned. I don't just mean desserts: bread dough and raw ground beef were things I couldn't keep my grubby little fingers off. I also ate raw potatoes and turnips and bacon out of the package if nobody was looking. Despite my mother's dire warnings, I never got sick. I know some who won't eat batter because of the raw eggs, but salmonella is rarely if ever in the news here. Is it possible to build up a tolerance to it? Living in Japan was fabulous for the abundance of raw food. Sushi, of course, but raw beef dipped in raw egg yolk? I'm there. Chicken sashimi? It was pretty good too. Now that I've grossed you all out, let's talk about these delicious cookies, shall we?

I made this cream cheese ice cream from Epicurious, adding some vanilla. It basically tastes like frozen cream cheese icing, which is a very good thing, I think. I put small blobs of the cookie dough in after I had churned it, meaning after 4 searches of my storage area, and a very long wait till the canister was sufficiently frozen. Then I had to wait again for it to firm up. This is a yummy and easy ice cream, and I think you could taste the carrot and spices, along with the coconut more in the dough than in the baked cookies. YUM!

I did bake some of the dough, and these were very yummy cookies, especially hot out of the oven. I wonder what they'd be like with zucchini, since I am drowning in the stuff. More on that in my next post.