Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Sandwiches

What kid doesn’t like dessert? Especially a decadent, chocolatey mess of a dessert? I know my kids do. They especially love helping me make desserts! My four year old Ellis is our resident dessert expert. She dreams up all sorts of yummy ideas. So when I told her she got to come up with a recipe, she was all over it. She combined her two favorite things-chocolate chip cookies and chocolate chip ice cream! She loves helping me in the kitchen. Even doing dishes!! Which I love! I learned cooking and baking from helping my mom in the kitchen, and I want the same with my daughter. I want her to be skilled in many areas in life as she grows up. Next week, she’s learning how to change a tire. Ok maybe not next week, she is only four. We’ll wait till she’s five.

While helping out in the kitchen, my kids are adamant that they do NOT need my help with measuring and stirring. While I LOVE cleaning up flour from the ceiling, I still let them try to do these simple tasks by themselves. It is sometimes hard because I am a little bit of a control freak when it comes to cooking and MY way of doing things, but I have definitely learned to relax a bit and let my kids figure out the method that works best for them. You can always get flour out of your daughter’s hair, but you won’t always get these moments of teaching them something new and letting them get into their own groove of how to do it best.

So we set out to make this most simple but amazing treat starting with our favorite cookie recipe. I chose this one because the cookies turn out soft and fluffy and easy to cut in half. We made our cookies big and used one cookie for the whole sandwich. If you choose, you can make smaller cookies and use two per recipe. This will result in a crispier crust. It is all in preference. Let’s get started. Full recipe and instructions below.

***As always when cooking with children, take extra safety measures. As the adult, always do the cutting and turning on the stove.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Start by putting slightly melted butter and sugars into a bowl and using a hand mixer, mix them until creamy. Add egg and vanilla mix well……..

Add flour and baking soda, mix well. Add in a whole bag of chocolate chips. That’s it! Easy Peasy!

Cookie sheets were being used at the time so I subbed my pizza pans-still works

Form the dough into eight large balls. This will ensure that you have a cookie big enough to cut in half and the cookie will be soft and squishy. If you want to have one cookie on each side of the sandwich and have it crunchier, make them smaller and flatten them a little. If cooking with kiddos, this is the point in the recipe where the adult has to take over (sharp knives, hot ovens and kids don’t mix).

Bake for 10 minutes. Let cool completely. Go play a few games of hide and seek. That should be enough time for them to cool. When cooled, tip the cookie up on it’s side and carefully cut in half so you have a top and bottom for your sandwich. Do this to as many cookies as you want to make into sandwiches. Then take out your container of ice cream. It should be a small round container so that it is roughly the same size as your cookies.

We chose chocolate chip ice cream because….. well yum, but the flavor is up to you. Get creative. Coffee flavored? Yes Please! Vanilla? Sure. Chocolate? Yummy!

Now, with a serrated knife, put the ice cream on its side and cut about 1/2 inch off of it, container and all.

You can kinda see what I am doing here. My daughter took the picture.

Sliced cookie. Look at all those chocolate chips!!

Now that you have the ice cream all sliced up, you can assemble the sandwich. Peel the paper off the ice cream. Put that slice between the two slices of cookies and VOILA! A yummy and very easy treat!