National Ice Cream Month: Ice cream sandwiches are for summertime

National Ice Cream month extends summer fun beyond the Fourth of July. Delight the kids or friends with ice cream sandwiches made with homemade chocolate chip cookies and stuffed with vanilla ice cream.

What a Fourth of July weekend! I feel like I’ve been going non-stop since leaving work Thursday afternoon in all the best ways possible – friends and running and barbecuing and fireworks-watching and roof-decking and beach-lounging and ice cream eating.

Ever since the temps got above 85 degrees F., I’ve been craving ice cream sandwiches. Not those kinda soggy rectangular chocolate cookie kind (though they have their time and place), but the real deal – soft and delicious chocolate chip cookies completely stuffed with vanilla ice cream. (Preferably consumed on a beach or a dock or on the front deck immediately after returning from one of those places, bathing suit slightly damp and sand still sticking to my feet.) Mmmmmm yes.

So what better occasion to make them happen than the Fourth of July?! The fourth itself did not involve a beach for me this year (though the fifth did!) – I am in DC after all and there are epic National Mall fireworks to be seen and heard and felt. But long before heading down to join the crowds around the Monument, I did some post-run, pre-barbecue baking to get the day started right.

I made these Fourth of July morning before carefully carefully transporting them to a barbecue, where they were later inhaled by the lucky few who knew about them in the freezer. I heard (and can infer based on the cookie dough I consumed in the baking process) that they were delicious. And so easy! I am definitely making these Dark/White Chocolate Chip Cookie Ice Cream Sandwiches again. Maybe tonight.

 If you want to get super-fancy you can make homemade ice cream, but that takes more time, so I just bought mine. Any flavor you want works, though I recommend sticking to something simple (i.e. vanilla) to not overwhelm the cookie.

Dark and white chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwiches
Yields 12-15 large sandwiches

3/4 cups (1-1/2 sticks) butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
2-1/2 cups flour
1 cup dark chocolate chips (I used Ghirardelli 70 percent, and since the chips are really big I chopped them smaller)
1/2 cup white chocolate chips
1 pint vanilla ice cream

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
2. Beat the butter and sugar until smooth, then mix in eggs and vanilla.
3. Stir in dry ingredients until almost combined, then add the chocolate chips, then finish mixing.
4. Use two spoons to scoop cookie dough onto a cookie sheet (approximately 2-tablespoon sided scoops).
5. Bake for approximately 9 minutes. Immediately remove from baking sheet to cool on a wire rack.
6. Cool cookies on wire racks for approximately 30 minutes, then put them in the freezer (I just put the whole rack in the freezer) for approximately 20 minutes. If you try fill them with ice cream when they’re still warm it will become a melty mess.
7. Match up your cookies into twos of around the same size. Scoop ice cream onto one cookie, press the other on top, and done! Ice cream sandwich! Put the sandwiches back in the freezer for at least 30 minutes (the longer the better) before transporting. I just carried them on a cookie tray covered in foil, but you could also wrap them individually in plastic wrap.