Tag Archives: Ice cream Sandwiches

Salted Honey Gingerbread Ice Cream Sandwiches

I consider Honey Cake to be the Jewish equivalent to Fruit Cake. It’s always served at Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) celebrations but no one really likes it.

Honey figures prominently in Rosh Hashanah menus as it symbolizes our desire for a sweet new year. The choice of honey was brilliantly explained on the website torah.org with this insight:
“A bee can inflict pain by its sting, yet it also produces delicious honey. Life has this same duality of potential. We pray that our choices will result in a sweet year.”

But nowhere is it written that honey must be baked into a cake. This year, Salted Honey Gingerbread ice Cream Sandwiches are on the menu. I’m a rebel.

Watch how they come together.

The cookie stamps I used are from Nordic Ware. Rolling the cookie dough in granulated sugar prevents the cookie from sticking to the cookie mold. You could certainly just bake the cookies without the bee themed stamps, but I couldn’t resist.

I tested out this recipe this summer and I wrapped each ice cream sandwich individually in plastic wrap and stored them in the freezer. We quickly discovered that the frozen cookies become rock hard making the sandwiches really difficult to eat. So in the recipe, I suggest you cut out the ice cream circles and store them a baking sheet wrapped in plastic wrap in the freezer. Assemble the sandwiches, with the room temperature, soft and chewy cookies, just before you want to eat them.

The addition of the salt to the honey ice cream keeps it from being cloyingly sweet. The spicy chewy ginger cookies are a perfect match for the sweet honey ice cream. Wishing you all a sweet and healthy new year.

Click here to print recipe for Salted Honey Gingerbread Ice Cream Sandwiches.

Hazelnut Almond “Waffle” Ice Cream Sandwiches

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This started out as a post about some simple “Nutty Crunch Cookies” that were featured in the March 2014 issue of Bon Appetit Magazine, in their “Fast, Easy, Fresh Weeknight Favourites” column. I think that there is no better way to end a meal than with a cookie, so I am always on the hunt for new cookie ideas. I filed it away and got on with more important stuff like the actual eating of cookies.

Somehow, a simple cookie seems to have snowballed into” waffle” ice cream sandwiches. If you have ever read the children’s book “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” (or the ever popular sequel, and my personal fave, “If You Give a Pig a Pancake”) , you will understand how these things happen.

It all started with my taking some photography classes with a talented food photographer. He encouraged me to start thinking less like a cook and more like a food stylist. I interpreted that to mean I needed to go shopping. A few trips to Target, HomeSense and Zone, and I had filled a baker’s rack with some lovely new props.
One of my favourite finds was this adorable cookie press set.I knew I had to use them to make those Nutty Crunch Cookies. As I was styling a “Milk and Cookies” shot, I kept staring at the “waffle” design on these cookies, thinking that they would be quite fantastic with a scoop of ice cream sandwiched between them. The Haagen Dazs Dulce de Leche Ice Cream sitting in my freezer called out to me.One of my favourite childhood memories is going to the CNE (The “Ex”) with my older sister and our Auntie Susie. After going on all the rides and playing all the games with us, we would head to the Food Building for Tiny Tom Doughnuts, Candy Apples and Ice cream Waffles. We used to beg for the treats before the rides, but Auntie Susie, wise beyond her years, knew that ice cream waffles prior to a wild and crazy ride on The Scrambler would not end well.

When my kids were little I would sometimes make them waffles and ice cream for dinner. Dinner and dessert all in one! I was a very efficient mother. Steaming hot crunchy waffles, wrapped around a cold scoop of ice cream is one of life’s perfect food combinations. While these cookies are not real “waffles”, the combo of the nutty crunch from hazelnut and almond cookies and the swirled caramel ribbons of dulce de leche ice cream is quite an unbeatable duo.

Click here to print recipe for Hazelnut Almond _Waffle_ Ice Cream Sandwiches.

Love Letter in a Hazelnut Macaron Coffee Ice Cream Sandwich

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I became a regular coffee drinker late in life. I had my first cup of coffee when I was in university and I needed to stay up late to study. I put 50 cents into the vending machine in the library lobby and a stream of steaming hot black sludge was emptied into my styrofoam cup. (This was before the days of Starbucks.) I took a sip, spit it back into the cup and never drank a drop of coffee again for the next 15 years.

Then when my kids were little I started going away on “girl’s weekends” with all the other harried moms in our neighbourhood. We traded up from morning playdates with apple juice and cookies to weekend getaways with wine and cheese. In those days we all bought cute new pyjamas for the weekend and gathered in the living room of my cottage on Saturday and Sunday mornings for breakfast. My friend Brigitte was shocked when I said that I didn’t like coffee. She made it her mission to convert me from tea to coffee. She filled a large glass measuring cup with milk and heated it in the microwave for about 2 minutes. Then she put the immersion blender into the measuring cup, turned it on, and “whoosh”, the milk foamed up like magic. She got a huge cereal bowl and filled it with about 1/4 coffee and 3/4 hot milk. She tipped in about 2 teaspoons of sugar and handed it to me. I took a sip, and fell in love. It was like having hot coffee ice cream. None of the bitterness of my first coffee experience. Saaaay, I do like coffee!!

When I got home I was so excited to tell my husband that I was now a coffee drinker. The next morning he made me a cup of his coffee. It tasted nothing like Brigitte’s! As soon as I lifted the cup to my mouth, an overwhelmingly strong unpleasant aroma hit me. Hazelnut vanilla?? What the f**k?? I affectionately dubbed his coffee “smelly coffee” and promptly bought my own plain coffee. Gradually over the years I increased the amount of coffee and decreased the volume of sugar and milk. My husband is still a proud card carrying drinker of Van Houtte Vanilla Hazelnut Coffee.

Because I occasionally give him a hard time about his “smelly coffee”, I decided to make him a special treat to make up for it. I made hazelnut macarons and sandwiched them with vanilla and coffee ice creams. An edible love letter!

Ground hazelnuts replace ground almonds in the classic macaron recipe. Bob’s Red Mill sells hazelnuts already ground. Hazelnut meal and icing sugar get pulsed in the food processor and then get pushed through a sieve.Egg whites and sugar are whisked into stiff peaks.Everything gets mixed together and then piped into circles for the cookies. I made a template for piping so I would end up with even sized macarons.I briefly contemplated making my own ice cream but I don’t love my husband that much! I did splurge and buy Haagen Dazs vanilla and coffee ice creams. I let the coffee ice cream soften and spread it out on a baking sheet. I froze it for several hours and then spread softened vanilla ice cream over the coffee. I let the whole thing freeze for several more hours.Assembling the sandwiches was easy with a cookie cutter.These ice cream sandwiches are quite versatile. They make an excellent late night snack.They are also eminently suitable for breakfast with a cup of coffee (smelly or not, your choice!)