Top 5 Cookie Dough Ice Creams

1.) Thomas Sweet (Washington, D.C. and New Jersey) - Chocolate Chip Cookie
The best twist on Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough I’ve encountered, so good it overtakes the original. A wholly unique flavor that I have yet to see anywhere else, this ice cream base tastes like cookie dough. That’s right: unlike other cookie dough flavors, this one contains no hunks of cookie dough because the flavor is in the ice cream itself. It’s so good that I’ve blogged about it twice before. It’s like eating the dough right out of the mixing bowl, complete with a mouthful of mini-chocolate chips in each bite.

2.) Chocolate Shoppe Ice Cream (Madison, WI) – Snap O’ Lantern

Much of this paragraph previously appeared in in the autumnal entry “Snap-O-Lantern & Other Pumpkin Ice Creams.”

A perennial favorite in my annual autumnal challenge to consume as many varieties of pumpkin foods as possible. The addition of gingerbread cookie dough isn’t the only reason Snap-o-Lantern tops the list. The ice cream reminds me of my first memories of pumpkin ice cream at the Hilton Village Parlor Restaurant back home: sweet in front, pumpkin in the back, creamy all the way around. I attribute this to the gingerbread cookie dough, which excuses the ice cream from having to be all spices at once and instead to focus on being pumpkin.

3.) Oberweis (Midwest grocers/parlors)–Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough

This paragraph appeared in the ongoing Freezer Favorites series.

It may seem strange that I lean on Oberweiss for my grocery-store Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough cravings since Ben & Jerry's are the ones who put the flavor on the map. But I'm going to commit foodie-sacrilege here: Such a heavy mix-in as cookie dough bites demands a lighter ice cream. Oberweiss is a super-premium brand that makes a product that manages to be flavorful without being heavy. Creamy and light, their Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough isn't overloaded with mix-ins, but doesn't skimp either. Most bites have some cookie dough with only a few containing chocolate chips, that perfect touch of chocolate to leave semisweet lingering on the tongue after the ice cream melts away.

4.) Turkey Hill (grocery store) – Double Dunker

Years back, Ben & Jerry’s created Milk & Cookies, a mash-up of Cookies-n-Cream and Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. It was simple and brilliant, but a combination not represented in grocery stores before then. Turkey Hill came up with their own twist on the idea (“Mocha ice cream swirled with chewy cookie dough and crunchy chocolate cookie swirl”) and created a superior product, which was no small effort given that Milk & Cookies ranks among one of the last of Ben & Jerry’s best flavors of recent years. Suffice to say, when a half gallon of Double Dunker is in the house it isn’t there for long. I consider it one of my Freezer Favorites.

5.) Ben & Jerry’s (RIP) – Oatmeal Cookie Chunk
Once Ben & Jerry’s discontinues a flavor, it is rare for them to bring it back. Oatmeal Cookie Chunk was actually the first occasion where I heard of such a thing happening. Like a cult TV show, when this flavor was discontinued, there was fan outcry, letter writing and pleading via Ben & Jerry’s online form to resurrect the dearly departed laid to rest in their Flavor Graveyard. (My girlfriend at the time was among the grieving, it having been her favorite flavor.) It had a rough-textured (oat-y?) base with chunky cookie dough and the perfect amount of fudge chunks to suggest chocolate without overwhelming the flavor. The flavor may not have lasted the second time around, but Ben & Jerry’s did drop a similar flavor is 2017: Oat of This Swirled. It's the next best thing.