This latest heat wave is making me think summer isn’t going to let go without a fight. A major, sweaty, wild-fire inducing fight, and the only thing we can really do about it is embrace it.  We celebrated Lesley’s 24th 25th birthday Sunday night, and I decided that ice cream sandwiches were a no-brainer for a birthday dinner dessert in the middle of a heat wave. This was my first attempt at making them, and since I couldn’t bear the thought of turning on my oven, I gave in and used store-bought cookies. Which I would totally do again in a heartbeat because these sandwiches were out of this world.

I used Tate’s Bakeshop chocolate chip cookies – the same ones I used in the icebox cake I made for our grandmother’s birthday and fell in love with.  They are perfectly crunchy and flat – traits that make them perfect for using in a layered cake or ice cream sandwich. I used Haagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream and let it sit out on the counter for about 12 minutes to soften. Soft ice cream – think the consistency of frozen yogurt or soft-serve ice cream - is key here. Too firm and you will break the cookies when you smoosh (<— official term) them together, too soft and they will melt faster than you can get them into the freezer.

Use an ice cream scoop to drop a ball of ice cream onto the back of a cookie. Take a second cookie and lightly smoosh it on top of the ice cream to form a sandwich. Place on a cookie tray lined with parchment and freeze for a few hours. I removed these from the freezer the next day and rolled a few of them in crushed Butterfinger bars and dipped some halfway into melted semi-sweet chocolate. If you do this, you are my kind of people.

I highly recommend making these a day ahead of time – the consistency was perfect and the toppings had a chance to set so they don’t crumble everywhere when you take a bite. Get creative and experiment with different flavor combinations – I can’t wait to try peanut butter cookies with chocolate ice cream next!

By Dannye