Sweet and Salty Homemade Ice Cream Sandwiches

4 large chocolate chip peanut butter cookies
1 1/4 cups softened ice cream
1/4 cup chopped salted peanuts
2 tbls chocolate chips

Split the softened ice cream between two of the cookies. Top with the other two cookies. Press together gently so they hold and a little ice cream comes out the sides. Roll them sideways in the chopped nuts and chips. Place in the freezer for at least an hour to harden.

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So here is what I kept hinting at in the peanut butter cookie post. These things were wicked good. I love ice cream sandwiches made with cookies, so making my own was a natural step. This is actually what the original cookie recipe is for, it's "I" in the Alpha Bakery, for ice cream sandwich. It has the cookie recipe and the way to make ice cream sandwiches out of them. But it has you dip half of the sandwich in a weird shortening based ganache kind of thing that I didn't really want anything to do with. So I took a page from the Chipwich book and rolled it in nuts and chocolate instead. I like the contrast of the salty peanuts and sweet ice cream, but if you aren't into sweet and salty you could always use unsalted nuts or just chocolate chips. Here's what you do.

First you need to prep your nuts. I have this awesome mini food processor that attaches to my wand mixer. It's a great little attachment. Please ignore my kung fu grip claw hand. I put some nuts in there, put the top on, attached the mixer base and whirred it around a bit. Got chopped nuts. You could also just use a knife or regular food processor if you wanted. Then I just put a line of that on a paper plate with some chocolate chips. Now take some softened ice cream, soft enough to spread, and plop it onto a cookie. This is why those cookies were so big, regular cookie sized ice cream sandwiches would have been pretty weak. Top it with another cookie and give it a gentle squeeze. You don't want a lot of ice cream coming out, but you do want a little to peek over the edges. That's how you get the stuff to stick. Now roll it in nuts and chocolate. I wound up pushing some of the nut/chocolate mix on by hand, just to make sure I had a good coating. Then back in the freezer to harden up. And that's it kids, homemade ice cream sandwiches. Good frigging times. It's a good one to get kids involved in. If they aren't wicked excited about making their own ice cream sandwiches, prick them with a needle and make sure they bleed. They're probably robots.*

*Disclaimer: Don't really prick your kids with needles. The authorities frown on that. They might be robots too...