It’s coming towards the end of summer and it’s still balmy and warm here in Seattle. I have been dying to make ice-cream sandwiches all summer, and it’s only now at the end of August that I actually get to make them. I started by making some home-made shortbread cookies, to which I added a thin layer of milk chocolate. I was just about to put the ice-cream in the middle when I realized I still had some leftover butterscotch sauce in the fridge. That in turn got me thinking about these great local roasted peanuts I had just bought. Peanuts + butterscotch sauce + ice-cream + chocolate + shortbread cookie equals the best ice-cream sandwich in the world. That was the type of math equation that was going on in my head. I will admit I am not very good at math, but it turns out I’m not too bad at food pairing. I made seven of these beauties, but somehow they didn’t last the week. These cookies are insanely addictive –think Snickers meets Twix in an ice-cream sandwich! If you fancy an insanely good end of summer treat, these ice-cream sandwiches will not let you down.
Ingredients
Cookies
Makes 15 large cookies – makes 7 ice-cream sandwiches with one cookie left over!
- 80g of butter, at room temperature
- 80g of white sugar
- 1 egg, lightly beaten
- 200g of flour
- 5g of baking powder
- A little extra flour for rolling out cookies.
Chocolate coating
- 50g of chocolate
Peanut Caramel
- 60g of roasted peanuts, chopped
- Small pinch of salt
- 100ml of butterscotch sauce
Ice-cream
- 500g of vanilla ice-cream
Method
- Preheat the oven to 180 C or 350 F.
- Line a large baking sheet with silicone paper.
- Cream the butter and sugar together in a large mixing bowl until light and fluffy.
- Beat in the egg and mix thoroughly.
- Sift the flour and baking powder into the mixture and beat until combined.
- Put the cookie dough on a floured surface or slipmat.
- Roll the dough out to about 5mm in thickness.
- Cut the cookies using a large cookie cutter. Mine are 3.5 inches in diameter.
- Once you have rolled out your cookies, place them onto the prepared baking sheet.
- Put the cookies in the oven for 10-15 minutes and bake until lightly golden.
- Place the cookies on a wire rack to cool.
- Once the cookies are cool, melt the chocolate in bowl in the microwave or in a bowl over a saucepan of boiling water.
- Using a silicone brush, paint the melted chocolate onto one side of each cookie.
- Leave the cookies to set on the wire rack.
- For the caramel nut layer, mix the butterscotch sauce with the chopped peanuts and a small pinch of salt.
- The ice-cream layer is slightly tricky. I used ice-cream from a tub, and I ended up taking the ice-cream out of the tub, letting it soften slightly. Then putting it on parchment paper on a cookie tray and putting another layer of parchment paper on top to create a nice rectangular slab of ice-cream. I then refroze this ice-cream slab for about an hour. After an hour, I used the same cookie cutter as I used for my cookies, and cut the ice-cream with that. You could avoid this whole step with the parchment paper by buying a flat block of ice-cream. It’s kind of hard to get blocks of ice-cream, where I live, so that is why I ended up using ice-cream from the tub and making it into a slab!
- To assemble, place the cookies, chocolate side up on parchment paper on a baking sheet.
- Carefully place the ice-cream circles on top of each cookie.
- Spoon the nutty caramel on top. (About a tablespoon for each cookie).
- Finally finish the sandwich by placing another cookie on top (cookie side up this time- you don’t want melty chocolate sandwich hands!)
- Once you have all 7 cookies finished, freeze for about 30 minutes before serving. But you will probably want to eat at least one straight away:)
