OK, Exactly What Flavor Is Monster Cookie Ice Cream?

There's a flavor of ice cream out there called Monster Cookie, and despite our association with cookies and a specific blue monster, it carries no affiliation with everyone's beloved cookie gobbling Cookie Monster. Instead, the ice cream flavor features a peanut butter ice cream base with monster cookie pieces in it. This then begs the question: Just what the heck are monster cookies?

Monster cookies are cookies that contain oats, peanut butter, and candy-coated chocolate like M&Ms. As far as its history goes, the recipe was originally submitted to the Lansing State Journal in 1971 by a man named Dick Wesley. He claimed that developing it eventually caused two of his home mixers to burn out, so the recipe is, in fact, an untamable beast of some sort. The original version included jam, but that ingredient's been weeded out over time in most recipes.

You can liken the cookies to peanut butter oatmeal cookies with chocolate in them, which is a classic blend of flavors even if the cookies aren't as scary as the "monster" part might have you believe. It's come and gone as a limited time ice cream flavor from manufacturers such as Tillamook, Blue Bell, and Target via its Favorite Day house brand.

To make things a touch more confusing, Cookie Monster ice cream is also a thing, though it's easy to spot the difference between it and monster cookie ice cream. That's because Cookie Monster ice cream (which is inspired by the character on Sesame Street) is a signature blue color — likely to match his unruly, blue fur. While there isn't exactly a defined recipe for it, most versions of the blue ice cream also include two different types of cookie crumbles, often chocolate chip cookies and crushed Oreos.

Baskin-Robbins once sold Cookie Monster ice cream as a limited-time flavor. Its version featured a blue-colored sweet cream ice cream, chocolate sandwich cookie pieces, chocolate chip cookie crumbles, and an added swirl of cookie dough batter. This flavor combination isn't as widely used as a limited-time item, which at least saves you some confusion in the grocery store's frozen aisle.