When I was a kid, I dipped a lot of stuff in a lot of stuff. Fries in ketchup, fries in my Frosty, Goldfish in pizza sauce, pizza in donair sauce, veggies in dip, grilled cheese in tomato soup, peanut butter toast in milk (my personal favourite)…
But the one that most every kid, adult, and senior citizen on the planet dips best is a cookie in milk. Any kind of cookie, any kind of milk, every chance you get.
Emily Post will never win this etiquette battle in my home.
This dessert is a play on cookies dipped in milk, since it is essentially just that. I added a grown-up element to my version with the addition of alcohol, which is completely optional. Optional? Yeah, optional, but definitely recommended. Just don’t serve the boozy version to the kids.
Try not to eat this all yourself, standing at the kitchen counter, off the spatula you’re supposed to be serving yourself a piece with, ok? Not that I can relate.
Ohh, who am I kidding? I didn’t get to be pleasantly pudgy by sitting down at the dinner table with a proper eating utensil to eat a proper serving size of dessert. That’s why I’m pleasantly pudgy, not bitterly, regretfully pudgy.
[Recipe] Layered Cookie Dessert
1 package store-bought cookies, your favourite kind
2 cups whipping cream
1/2 vanilla bean (optionally, 1 tsp vanilla extract)
1/2 cup sugar
1-2 cups milk, depending on cookies
2 oz liquor (optional)
Let’s start by making the whipped cream. If you don’t want to make whipped cream, you could certainly use a tub of whipped cream from the freezer section of your favourite grocery store. I’d only do that in a pinch though, since making real whipped cream is healthier, very easy to do, and tastes loads better.
Split the vanilla bean, if you have one. Vanilla beans smell ridiculously good, and the seeds are gorgeous.
Scrape the seeds out of one side of the vanilla bean. You can save the rest of the vanilla bean by putting it back in the container with any others you have. You can use the scraped out side of the vanilla bean to make vanilla sugar by putting it in a container of regular white sugar, if you’d like to.
Put the vanilla seeds, whipping cream, and sugar in a large mixing bowl.
Begin whipping the mixture on high:
Keep going.
Longer.
Longer.
Just a bit longer, until the cream is properly whipped, nice and thick.
Get a station ready for the dessert assembly: arrange the milk, cookies, whipped cream, an 8×8 pan, and the liquor (I used Bailey’s in caramel flavour), in one convenient place for assembly.
Begin dipping the cookies into the milk and layering them into the pan.
If you’re an experienced cookie dipper, you’ll know that the cookies are fully saturated with milk when the tiny little bubbles stop coming up to the top of the milk’s surface.
Continue dunking until you’ve used half of the cookies, or until the bottom of the pan is full, whichever comes first.
Drizzle half of the alcohol over the cookies, if using.
Mmm, boozy cookies.
Cover the cookie layer with half of the whipped cream.
Repeat the entire process for the second layer, sealing the pan with the remainder of the whipped cream.
Chill for at least 6 hours before serving.
That’s it! You can pretty it up if you’d like to by shaving some chocolate over the top, or by dusting it with cocoa.
