Cooking Baking Eating

Yesterday was spent in the most delightful way. The sun has been shining, it is slowly getting warmer, and things are just looking brighter all around. Money is still tight with the economy, so what can you do when you want a nice treat on a warm spring day?

Make your own ice cream sandwiches!

I’m on a mission to do “Pantry Buster” type of cooking lately, and use things that are in the pantry rather than something new and exciting that needs all sorts of new ingredients that I have to stock up on.

I’ve wanted to do home made ice cream sandwiches for a while since I’ve been craving a delicious Its-It sandwich. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find them here since we moved, so I decided to make them with the help of my lovely assistant and friend who came over.

An Its-It is a large ice cream sandwich made of two oatmeal cookies, filled with vanilla ice cream, and covered in a layer of chocolate. Who couldn’t love that! I mean seriously. But since I can’t find them, I wanted to make them. And if I did I wouldn’t want to spend the money, AND they are huge. Seriously huge. I believe you need two hands to properly eat it. My version is much smaller

I had never made oatmeal cookies before, so I didn’t have a good recipe to go off of. After several hours looking for recipes online, and in my cook books, I decided to use the one I found in my Joy of Cooking book that had a pretty basic recipe for an oatmeal cookie. By basic I mean there were no spices at all, except salt, in the cookies. I needed something spicy and wonderful to go with the vanilla and chocolate.

With a few additions in spices, the cookies turned out GREAT! Spicy and surprisingly gingery, I think these will be a must have in my kitchen even if I don’t make them with ice cream. When we made these, we only covered half of them in chocolate, and I find the ones without chocolate a little better. I must be over my chocolate craving phase.

Spicy Oatmeal Ice Cream Sandwiches
Made 15 sandwiches

• 1/2 cup butter (softened)
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon milk
• 1 cup all-purpose flour (sifted)
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 cup quick rolled oats (or half old-fashioned and half quick)
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• Vanilla ice cream
• 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

For the cookies:

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Cream together sugar and butter until slightly fluffy and well incorporated.
2. Add the egg, vanilla and milk. Beat until smooth.
3. Sift together the flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder into the bowl and mix until combined.
4. Add the oats and spices, and mix.
5. Drop cookies by using a cookie scoop or by roughly a tablespoon sized each onto parchment lined baking sheet.
6. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until cookies are lightly browned.

For The Sandwichs

1. Let the cookies cool until they are room temperature. Let the ice cream sit out for about 10 minutes before assembling the cookies.
2. When the ice cream has softened, spoon a good amount of ice cream onto a cookie, the ice cream should be between 3/4”-1” thick. Squish the ice cream flat with another cookie to complete the sandwich.
3. Sandwiches can be eaten immediately if desired. To add chocolate, sandwiches should first harden in the freezer for at least 30 minutes.
4. After freezing sandwiches, start melting chocolate using the double boiler method until chocolate is completely melted.
5. Take frozen sandwiches from the freezer and work quickly to apply chocolate to the tops and sides by spooning over, dipping, or covering in any method desired.
6. When sandwiches are covered, re-freeze for another 20-30 minutes or until hard again.