Ice Cream Cookie Sandwiches

I wanted to make some fun and easy to make ahead treats for this past weekend when I had family visiting, so I made a few different kinds of ice cream sandwiches. I've made plenty of cookies and I always try to make homemade ice cream, but this is the first time I've combined the two to make ice cream cookie sandwiches.

I tried a new recipe for a chocolate sugar cookie that I found on one of my favorite food blogs, Smitten Kitchen. I made homemade vanilla bean ice cream to make sandwiches with the chocolate cookies. While I thought the cookies were great out of the oven, I don't know if I cared for them as much when they were cold and frozen as ice cream sandwiches, but they were still yummy. It might have been because the other one I made was just so much better. I made my traditional oatmeal cookies and paired them with homemade cinnamon ice cream. This was the perfect combination and by far the favorite of the two. The cookies just have more texture and the ice cream was more creamy and flavorful with the cinnamon.



I baked the cookies a day in advance, let them cool and then stored them in air tight containers to keep them fresh. I made my ice creams in advance as well and let them harden more in the freezer. When I was ready to put together the ice cream sandwiches, I took the ice creams out of the freezer for about 10-15 minutes to let the ice cream soften so you could spread it. The vanilla ice cream I made was not a custard based ice cream though and it softened too much where it squished out of the cookies a bit when we wrapped them.

After we made the sandwiches, we wrapped them individually in aluminum foil and put them in the freezer to harden. It's nice that they can be made in advance and you can just pop them out of the freezer when you're ready for a treat. There are so many fun combinations you can try with different cookies and ice creams. The other thing I did not do that would be yummy is to roll the edges of the ice cream sandwich in nuts, chopped candy or mini chips before freezing them. You could also make chocolate fudge or caramel dipping sauce for even more indulgence.