Circus Animal Cookie Ice Cream

Smooth, creamy, and lusciously pink ice cream brimming with Frosted Circus Animal Cookies and a rich Rainbow Chip Frosting swirl! All your wildest childhood dreams come true!

Take one look at the following image, and tell me this wasn’t one of your childhood fantasies…

Am I right, or am I right??

I’m sure everyone remembers slathering their favorite FUNfetti cake with this wonderfully rich frosting, brimming with oodles of those enticing little rainbow chips. And no, I’m not talking about that bogus frosting that comes with sprinkles, called Funfetti frosting. This stuff is better.

Correction, this stuff is LIGHTYEARS better. There are literally tiny bits of rainbow mixed throughout the frosting! Ok, so they’re actually just colorful white chocolate chips, but I’m 99.99% sure that these are what rainbows taste like. Shockingly, Betty Crocker discontinued this heavenly frosting a couple of years ago. Wait, what??? But thank God, it’s back and here to stay. Yay!

Oddly enough, Mother’s went bankrupt in 2008 and abruptly shut down, signaling the end of those magical pink and white cookies we all adored.

Luckily, Kellogg’s swooped in just in time to save the day by acquiring the company and returning our cherished little circus animals to their rightful place on the store shelves again. Yay again!

So now that I’ve bored you with my overdrawn and most likely unnecessary “history” of Rainbow Chip Frosting and Circus Animal Cookies, let’s get to the good stuff…

I don’t know why it took me this long to combine two of my childhood ecstasies into one phenomenally amazing dish of euphoria. Let’s be honest, the ONLY fun part about being an adult is having the freedom to make unbelievably sugar-laden treats like this.

As well as the freedom to eat every single spoonful of it…

However, it’s kind of a double-edged sword, seeing as you no longer have that spry metabolism you once had as a child to keep up with the caloric demands of such sugarphoric pleasures.  Sigh…guess I’ll just have to settle for eating 3/4 of the dish in one sitting, rather than the whole thing. These “adult” decisions, I do not like. At all.

Moving on…

This ice cream starts out with a simple vanilla base with the heightened sweetness of almond extract as well as the heightened prettiness of pink food coloring. Then I stirred in TWO, not one, but TWO heaping cups of coarsely chopped Circus Animal Cookies. If you want to add the entire bag, go right ahead. There are no rules in adult land, remember? 

And here’s when our childhood fantasies are fully realized…

The Rainbow Chip Frosting swirl…

Just look, and try to take in the beauty of this hypnotizing river of smooth, lustrously luscious wonder swirled throughout the breathtaking pink landscape.

Here’s the true money shot.

Depending on how big your sweet tooth is (I have about twenty), you can use less frosting. I made the ice cream base not as sweet and more simple in order to balance the amount of sweetness from the Rainbow Chip frosting swirl.

To get an even distribution of frosting throughout the ice cream, I used a layering technique of pouring half of the ice cream into the container, blobbing half of the frosting on top, swirling with a knife, then pouring the last half on top and swirling in the rest of the frosting.

I shouldn’t have to convince you into believing that these two food celebs belong together. And no, I’m not talking about Giada DeLaurentis and Bobby Flay…ahem, cheaters.

ANYway….these photos should be ALL the persuasion you need to dash into your car, speed to the nearest grocery store (running down a few people along the way, because duh, bonus points), and anxiously swooping up your beloved Circus Animal cookies as well as your most cherished Rainbow Chip frosting. 

So why on Earth are you still sitting in front of your computer??

GO!!!

Circus Animal Cookie Ice Cream

Smooth, creamy, and lusciously pink ice cream brimming with Frosted Circus Animal Cookies and a rich Rainbow Chip Frosting swirl! All your wildest childhood dreams come true!

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 45 minutes mins

Chilling Time 5 hours hrs

Total Time 5 hours hrs 45 minutes mins

Course Dessert

Cuisine American

Servings 6 Servings

Ingredients

  

• 4 egg yolks
• ¾ cup sugar
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 1 ⅓ cups heavy cream
• 1 ⅔ cups milk (I used 1%)
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• ¼ teaspoon almond extract
• Pink food coloring (gel works best)
• 2 cups Frosted Circus Animal Cookies chopped (plus more for topping)
• 1 (16 oz) can Rainbow Chip frosting
• 1 Tablespoon milk
• Sprinkles

Instructions

 

• In the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with the whisk attachment, beat egg yolks, sugar, and salt on high speed until yolks lighten in color and thicken into a ribbon as you lift the whisk out of the bowl, about 2 minutes.
• In a medium saucepan combine heavy cream and milk. Stir over medium heat and bring to a simmer, about 5 minutes. With mixer on low, gradually pour 1 cup of warm liquid into egg mixture. Add egg mixture to saucepan. Stir and and continue to cook over medium heat until mixture begins to bubble slightly and is thick enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon.
• Immediately pour custard mixture through a fine mesh sieve over a bowl or large glass measuring cup. Whisk in the extracts. Cover and chill the mixture thoroughly in the refrigerator.
• Once the custard mixture is chilled, freeze in an ice cream maker, following the manufacturer's instructions. During the last 2 minutes of churning, add the food coloring. While ice cream is churning, stir the milk into the can of frosting to thin it out.
• Once ice cream is done churning, stir in the chopped cookies by hand. Pour half of the mixture into a freezer-safe container. Spoon blobs of the frosting evenly over the ice cream, then use a butter knife to swirl throughout. Add the remaining ice cream on top, followed by more blobs of the remaining frosting. Swirl again, then top with extra cookies and sprinkles. Freeze for at least 4 hours. Scoop and enjoy!