Win-the-Day Ice Cream Sandwiches
One evening not too long ago my adult daughter was home for a weekend visit. We were watching TV when she suddenly exclaimed (with great enthusiasm I might add): “I forgot! At this house you get dessert every night!” While that may not be exactly true (what? Dessert at my house? Nah) … I’ll admit that it’s a rare day when there’s no ice cream in my freezer. I inherited my love of ice cream from my dad. Growing up, the regular for our family of seven was rectangular cartons of store-brand ice cream. In later years, my dad stocked his freezer with a minimum of four half-gallon cartons of Dreyer’s or Umpqua, or whatever was on sale, ice cream in the latest crazy mixtures. I’m more of a purist when it comes to my ice cream. I don’t want more than two things going on inside that tub. My top three: Haagen Dazs Vanilla Swiss Almond, Haagen Dazs Chocolate Chocolate Chip and Tillamook Coffee Almond Fudge. I’m also always up for visiting (even standing in the rain) the local ice cream shop. In college it was Prince Puckler's. When in Portland it’s Salt and Straw and here in Seattle it’s Molly Moon’s. After 30-plus years of living with me, my husband has perfected being my ice cream partner-in-crime. This year his birthday fell on college football Saturday. (Did I mention that the Oregon Ducks won the day beating Ohio State for the first time in history?) Extra points for my homemade ice cream sandwiches. Think super rich and scoopable dark chocolate ice cream (inspired by Molly Moon Melted Chocolate) layered with old fashioned vanilla ice cream sandwiched inside made-from-scratch chocolate cookies with just the right texture.
Super scoopable over-the-moon chocolate ice cream
If you’ve ever tasted the Melted Chocolate ice cream from Molly Moon’s, then you know what I’m talking about. They make it with 70% dark, organic, fair trade Theo Chocolate melted with a hot mixture of cream, milk and sugar for a dense, extra fudgy chocolate ice cream. This how-to recipe from The Kitchn approaches the same rich chocolatey taste.
Ingredients
4 ounces 70% Theo dark chocolate
2 ounces 45% Theo milk chocolate
2 cups whole milk
1 cup heavy cream
¾ cup sugar
¼ cup condensed milk
3 Tablespoons Dutch-processed cocoa powder
Directions and notes
Below are some of my hints, but for the full directions, go here. The first time I made this, it was a bit tricky to figure out what bowls and pans to use for what and I ended up with a lot of dishes to hand wash!
Goes without saying, but make sure your ice cream bowl is frozen! I use the KitchenAid ice cream attachment.
Bring a shallow large skillet of water to boil, turn off heat. I chopped my chocolate and placed directly into my KitchenAid stainless bowl which stands nicely in the skillet. Leave it there to melt, stirring a few times. Judge what skillet to use by testing to see how far up the water will come on the bowl as to warm the chocolate.
In a small to medium saucepan, heat the milk, cocoa, sugar and condensed milk. Bring to a simmer and whisk over medium-high heat once fully melted.
Add the hot dairy mixture into the melted chocolate that’s in your KitchenAid bowl, a ladleful at a time. Then you can place the bowl right on your mixer and use the whisk attachment to mix it well. This will also cool it down.
You can strain the mixture if desired, but that’s one more thing to wash and I found it not to be necessary.
Get your ice bath ready. I don’t do it at the beginning as the other steps take a little time! I used my largest mixing bowl and filled with ice from freezer and cold tap water.
Set the stainless KitchenAid bowl full of your chocolate ice cream mixture into the bowl. It will sit here nicely, and the tall edges mean water won’t get into your ice cream. Let it sit for 20 minutes to get cold, stirring occasionally.
Churn time! Put your ice cream bowl from the freezer onto the mixer per the manufacturer’s instructions. Turn to the lowest speed and slowly pour in the chocolate mixture. Do it slowly so it doesn’t splatter. Churn 35 minutes. Pour into freezer container (what I use) and freeze overnight. This ice cream doesn’t freeze super hard due to the condensed milk, which makes it super smooth and scoopable.
P.S. You’ll have plenty of leftover ice cream after making the sandwiches!
The perfect-texture cookie sandwich part
For the chocolate sandwiches, I have found the recipe from Smitten Kitchen to be spot on. I’ve made other ice cream sandwich recipes that either require assembling individually or that are too hard and the ice cream squirts out the sides. These cookies are easy to bite into but don’t get soggy or gummy. And they are baked in a 13x9-inch pan and cut after filling and freezing. I packaged mine into small paper bags so you can grab and go and keep your fingers clean while eating. Perfect for watching football on a sunny September Saturday!
Ingredients
1/4 cup (4 tablespoons) unsalted butter, cold is fine
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
3 tablespoons whole milk
1 large egg white
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 cups (100 grams) all-purpose flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder (I used 2 Tbs. Rodelle Dutch processed cocoa powder and 2 Tbs. black cocoa powder to get just the right dark color and a hint of Oreo taste.)
Directions
Prep: Read through all the directions before making. Lining a a 13x9-inch baking pan with parchment paper makes life easy. Make sure your parchment hangs over the two short sides of the pan; you’ll use them as handles later. A trick for parchment paper is to butter your pan first so the paper doesn’t slip all over. Then add a little butter to the exposed sides of pan.
Mix: Again, a KitchenAid mixer is super helpful here. Melt your butter in the stainless mixer bowl over a skillet and then place on mixer. Whisk until fully melted and cooled down. Whisk in additional ingredients starting with sugar, salt and milk. Then add egg white and vanilla, followed with cocoa powder and baking powder. Lastly, add your flour and mix by hand until just mixed.
Bake: Use an offset spatula to spread the chocolate mixture into your 13x9 pan. It will be thin, and you may need to switch to a small offset spatula or knife to get into the corners. I like the USA Pans because they have super straight edges. This is where having butter under your parchment to hold it into place really helps!
I baked for exactly 15 minutes and then poked holes all over the surface with a wooden skewer to mimic traditional ice cream sandwiches. You can cool completely on wire rack or if you’re in a hurry like me, I put the pan right in the freezer for about 15 minutes. In the meantime, I pulled my chocolate ice cream out of the freezer to get soft (about 10 min).
Assemble: Remove the pan from freezer (or once cool on counter), make sure sides are loose and then use the parchment handles to lift out of pan and place onto a cutting board or surface. Cut the 13” side in half exactly so you end up with two 9 x 6.5- inch cookies. Return the used parchment to the pan. Place one of the cookie halves back in the parchment-lined pan upside down so the “holes” face the bottom of the pan. Push it up against the 9” edge. Then scoop the chocolate ice cream all over and spread it evenly with an offset spatula. From here, I placed in the freezer. At this point I removed a carton of Tillamook Old Fashioned Vanilla from the freezer and sat on counter to soften. After about 10-15 minutes, remove the pan from freezer. The chocolate ice cream will have firmed up so you can now spread a layer of vanilla without them melting together. I just eyeballed how thick I wanted each layer. Press the second cookie half, right-side-up, onto the vanilla ice cream. Use the parchment paper and a piece of foil to give the exposed side of the now 9 x 6.5” sandwich something to butt up against. Place back in freezer overnight.
Cut and eat: When ready to cut, lift out using the paper/foil and place on large cutting board or surface. You may want to trim the edges if not straight or “messy.” In fact, if you want them to be exact, trim ½ inch (total) off the 6.5 inch side and give yourself a little sample taste test. (You know you want to.) Then, using a big chef knife, make two smooth cuts in each direction so you end up with nine 3x2 squares. Wipe off your knife in between cuts so the two ice creams don’t smudge together. I couldn’t resist adding some sprinkles to the edges since these were going to be a birthday treat. But be forewarned that depending on your sprinkles, the colors could melt together. (In restrospect, I totally should have used game-day colors!) I found it easiest to place the sandwiches back into my pan and back into the freezer for 15-20 minutes so they were good and frozen. Then, to make the sandwiches easy to grab during the football game, I placed them into individual food-safe paper bags and put back in freezer.
Build your own ice cream sandwiches
Now that you have the sandwich part down — easy, peasy ice cream made easy — feel free to build your own ice cream sandwiches. I’m dreaming of a pumpkin-chocolate combo next, followed by a holiday mint chip or peppermint. And then there’s coffee. I may need to make a coffee-almond version. You could roll the edges in mini chocolate chips or nuts. Use your family’s favorite team colors and you won’t even have to get up off the couch to win the day.
