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Cookie Ice Cream

From this teshuva, https://dinonline.org/2010/05/17/berocha-on-ice-cream-with-cookies-inside/
It seems the Rav holds cookie dough is a Mezenos product. I wanted to know why cookie dough is that bracha. Isn’t it raw and not cooked? Shouldn’t it be shehakol? Or do we say that since it is sometimes made to be eaten raw (like in cookiedough icecream) and the process of mixing the flour and other ingridients into a dough makes the product chashuv, the bracha is as if it is cooked and gets a mezonos?

Answer:

Although the blessing on standard dough is shehakol, if the dough is prepared in such a that renders it suitable for consumption (for instance a doughnut, which is cooked/fried rather than baked), and it is the normal way to eat it in this manner, one would recite a mezonos.

This will apply to cookies in ice cream, provided that there is a significant amount of cookies inside.

If there is only “cookie powder,” which is used as a kind of “spice” for the ice cream, the berachah would be shehakol.

It is therefore possible that different ice creams will therefore be shehakol/mezonos, depending on their texture.

Both berachos are valid bedi’eved.

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2 Comments

  1. Thanks Rebbe for the clarification. I still don’t fully understand the comparison to a doughnut. The doughnut is cooked/fried in the end. Therefore it seems obvious that it should get the bracha mezones. I have seen poskim discuss gronala bars and puffed rice and debate whether the bracha is adama or mezones. In Rav Bodner’s sefer Vsen Bracha, he quotes Rav Shlomo Zalman Aurbach Zatzal as saying that with puffed rice and granola since they aren’t cooked in the classic sense but manufactured with steam or heat, that doesn’t count as bishul(not a true maaseh kedeira) and therefore the product remains adama (like parched grain in the gemera). Others like Rav Elyashuv supposedly say that it is considered mezones because that the steaming process causes the items product to come together etc. However, It seems to me the debate is whether alternative forms of cooking are considered cooking in halacha, but everyone agrees that cooking must be involved for the item to get a mezones.(It seems to me that the poskim would agree that the granola bar made in this process is better than parched granola, but they seem to be saying that without an actual halachik bishul it retains adama) If raw grain and even parched grain get only an adama, why would just mixing flour and eggs and chocalate chips and other products in cookie dough be considered mezonos. Is it that the cooking is lav davka and any method that makes the product better then the original product gets the status of mezones? Does Rebbe have any sources that say straight out that dough made into a chashuv entity (like cookie dough) gets mezones if one were to eat it alone?

    1. The proof from the doughnut was just to demonstrate that there is no need for baking. To my understanding, the crucial point is the mixture with water. If flour is mixed with water, thereby creating a fully-formed product, its berachah is mezonos. This is true whether the mixture is baked, cooked, or neither. For ordinary dough, only a shehakol is made, because it is still missing baking, which is an essential part of the preparation. But for dough that is made to be eaten as-is, without baking, I don’t see a reason why the berachah should not be mezonos. This is unlike puffed wheat, which is not mixed with water, and is therefore essentially different, and lacks the importance (chashivus) for the mezonos blessing. I have not seen an explicit source on this, and will bli neder try to research it further.
      Best wishes for Yom Tov!

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