Birthday Celebrations
Remember that time I said I was going to eat a lower carb diet, maybe less sugar overall to see if it helped with my joints? Yes, me too—-and overall I have, but let’s be super honest with each other——all bets are off when we’re talking about a birthday celebration. My husband’s birthday was last weekend, and in the past, I would have had the girls make a cake for him. And usually if they’re making the cake it’s a box mix because their big focus is on the decorations, not necessarily the cake itself. However, it’s also been like 90’ and humid every day lately——so chances of me turning on the oven and baking a cake were slim to none. I decided we would try something different, but still something that my kids could help make. Wasn’t quite sure what that would be other than it was going to absolutely be a no-bake dessert.
One of my favorite sites that I used to go to all the time, and still do pretty frequently, is Sallys Baking Addiciton. Literally every recipe I’ve made off of her site has been phenomenal. The only problem is that many of the recipes aren’t gluten-free, and I’ve learned it’s not always as simple as swapping out flours to make something work for us. But… I decided I’d browse through anyways and see what caught my eye. Took all of about 10 seconds before I saw it. There it was... in all of it’s deliciousness and simplicity and no bakingness—-a Cookie Dough Lovers Ice Cream Pie. Wellllllllll….We love cookie dough. And we love ice cream. Seemed like a no-brainer to me!
Now to make it gluten-free. This recipe really didn’t need a whole lot of changes. I had gluten-free Oreos on hand, so that worked perfectly for the crust. My kids were able to make the edible cookie dough using Bobs Red Mill 1:1 all-purpose flour, but otherwise didn’t change anything in the recipe. I heat-treated the flour in the microwave so that we could use it for the edible dough. Then we mixed everything together, separated those little bits of perfection onto a tray and froze them. I kid you not—-these little dough bites were like little bits of heaven. They taste JUST like the cookie dough bites in regular cookie dough ice cream. That has been something that I’ve yet to come across with any store bought gluten-free cookie dough, so this in itself was super exciting! I actually plan on making another batch of the cookie dough bites and keeping them in a bag in the freezer. That way, if she or I want cookie dough ice cream, we’ll just take vanilla ice cream and sprinkle some of those bad boys on top——maybe even get a little crazy with a drizzle of chocolate syrup or something. This is also assuming I don’t just eat all of the cookie dough bites by themselves and have them leftover.
Back to my pie——we kept the rest of the recipe the same. Sort of——I’m starting to feel like those people that always comment underneath a recipe about how wonderful it was and that they loved it and give it 5 stars, but they changed half of the ingredients that were used. But seriously, I really didn’t change any other ingredients…we just added one more! I was feeling extra spicy when I made this I guess, because I added about 3/4 of a jar of hot fudge. I put half of the ice cream in the pan, and then drizzled some hot fudge on before adding the rest of the ice cream in. On the top, we drizzled more fudge—-mainly because my oldest told me that’s how she wanted to decorate this and it’d look better. I can’t argue with her on this one.
The picture doesn’t do it justice. Mainly because I really have some work to do on taking food pictures, but also——you really just have to make this and eat it. Trust me on this one….it was worth breaking my own rules, having a bit of extra sugar and enjoying a nice cold treat on a hot day as part of his birthday celebration.