Oatmeal Cookie Crunch v. 1.1 (Faux-lo Top)

It's a sort-of-not-really cheat weekend for the Oatmeal Cookie Halo Top fan in the house, so I thought I'd take a stab at a higher-calorie proof of concept for my version of the flavor. It helps that I already made some version of this with the cottage cheese base.

Toasted oats add-in

• 1 T butter

• 3/4 c old fashioned oats

• 3/4 c milk (see note)

• Pinch cinnamon, salt

Note: I could see adding all the milk from the base recipe here and cooking the oatmeal with the sugars, egg yolks, etc. but I did not want to commit to using all the oats and wanted to retain some control over the base. If you don't want a super thick and oat-y base, use more milk here and strain out the oats. (You'll want to end up with 1.5 c milk for the base).

Melt the butter in a small skillet on medium heat and toast the oats until browned and fragrant, about 5 minutes. Add the milk, cinnamon, and salt and simmer for 5-10 minutes or until the oats have absorbed most of the liquid. Set aside to cool.

Modified base

Make the base as per the Faux-lo Top 2.1, with the following changes:

• Use only 1 cup milk

• Replace the granulated sugar by brown, and increased the amount to 40g

• Use 2 packets stevia (because brown sugar)

• Use 1/2 T vanilla extract (basic brown stuff) + 1/2 t butter extract (optional) + pinch cinnamon

Depending on your desired texture, blend some or all (me: 1/2, then up to 3/4 of the oatmeal) of the oats with the cheese / glycerine mixture and reserve the rest. Add to this the cooked milk/egg base, extracts, etc. Proceed as usual with the base.

As is, each serving of this ice cream (not using all the oats) would have 348 calories or so. The picture shows a half serving.

Leftover cooked oats improvisation

I mixed the remaining oats with brown sugar (2 T?), tossed them in some melted butter (about 1/2 T) and spread them out on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet. In a fit of indecision, I did not cook them as a single layer, but rather as small clusters (2 to 4 oats) but placed relatively close together. Baked at 350 for 15 minutes, this resulted in a sort of lattice.

This topping would add 72 calories to each serving. Thoughts for a lighter v. 1.2:

• Reduce oats to 1/3 c (if blending all of it)

• Skip butter (dry toast)

• Hint baking soda for some cookie flavor?

• Reduce brown sugar to 20g (was almost too sweet, consider use of small amount of caramel extract or dark molasses?), restore original stevia amount

• Incorporate any unblended oats as-is (unbaked). Might be a pain to separate the clusters.

#icecream #recipetesting