A chocolate chip cookie made from ice creamToday, I am going to reveal to you the answer to one of the world's last unsolved mysteries: can you really make cookies from the cookie dough chunks in Ben & Jerry's "Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough" ice cream?

It was a hot day in the summer of 2007 when a few of my co-workers and I decided to get some ice cream to fight the excruciating heat in our non-air-conditioned office building. Only a few days before that, I had an interesting discussion with one of my co-workers about which ice cream was best. As we had narrowed it down to Häagen Dasz vs. Ben & Jerry's, it was revealed to me that my co-worker had never actually tried the "Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough" flavor which in my eyes disqualified him for the discussion. I told him that to re-enter the discussion, he would first have to try it and so he did. While he liked the (almost negligible) ice-cream part of "Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough", he didn't really care for the actual chunks of cookie dough. When he was finished, he had carefully eaten around the chunks which were now slowly thawing at the bottom of the cup. I thought to myself "what a waste", but since the chunks were now contaminated with his saliva, I wasn't gonna eat them either.
I no longer remember who came up with the idea, but at some point someone suggested to put the cookie dough chunks into the oven and see if they actually turn into
cookies. So we left them to defrost a little longer, washed away the remaining ice cream, put them on a saucer and stuck them into the company oven. The dough slowly collapsed into a doughy disc (come to think of it, that sounds an awful lot like the definition of a cookie), then rose again (I'm assuming there's some kind of baking powder in the cookie dough which seems really odd, considering that you're supposed to eat it when it's frozen) until it finally turned golden brown (see picture).

All throughout the baking procedure, the room was filled with the wonderful scent of freshly made cookies and when we opened the oven door, the smell was almost overwhelming. The cookie looked absolutely delicious and so we cut it into pieces so that everyone could have a taste.

The cookie had a caramel-like taste and texture to it and stuck to your teeth as you tried to chew it. It was insanely sweet and while it didn't taste bad at all, it wasn't the kind of sensational taste that we had all hoped for. Nonetheless, we were all happy to see that you can indeed make cookies from Ben & Jerry's "Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough" ice cream. It may not be the cheapest way of making cookies and the cookies may not be the yummiest you've ever had (if you're looking for yummy cookies, try Pepperidge Farm), but it shows that the stuff that makes this ice cream so great really is cookie dough and not something else.