Oatmeal Cookie Honey Vanilla Ice Cream Manwiches

You’ve had one of those classic ice cream sandwiches.

The rectangular shaped, paper wrapped treats of vanilla ice cream encased in a pair of soft, pock marked chocolate cookies?  The damp wrapper is slowly pulled away, leaving bits of cookie and ice cream stuck to it and you can decide whether you want to lick those away before rewrapping a portion of it to keep the cookie from sticking to your fingers as you eat it.  But I never did that.  It interfered with being able to enjoy the quickly softening ice cream first, running my tongue up one side and down the other before taking my first bite.  Sticky finger clean-up followed.

Every day during my first summer after high school, I had one of those soggy frozen treats straight from the vending machine outside a Cultural Geography class my then boyfriend cajoled me into taking so I’d get three units out of the way before beginning my freshman year in college.  The ice cream sandwiches were his idea as was the everyday habit.  He was thin by nature, and I because I never seemed to eat anything in those days, so eating vending machine junk food at 10 am during our daily break seemed just fine.  That was then.

I’ve had ice cream sandwiches since then, but sadly, they’re more soggy than I remember, much smaller, and the bits and pieces clinging to my fingers not so charming.  So what’s an ice cream sandwich lover to do?

Make her own.

No sogginess. Creamy ice cream to lick along the sides.  No sticky fingers to clean up.

The oatmeal and raisins keeps them from being junk food, right?

Oatmeal Cookie Honey Vanilla Ice Cream Manwiches

I enjoy this oatmeal cookie recipe because it’s the perfect mix of chewy and crunchy.  I decided to use it for the ice cream sandwiches with the following ingredient substitutions and/or choices:

• butter instead of shortening
• allspice instead of nutmeg (because I love it!) but cardamom is also good
• red flame raisins (they’re huge, moist red raisins made from red flame grapes)
• no nuts (even though I love them as well)

I used this homemade ice cream recipe to fill the sandwiches with the following ingredient substitutions and/or choices:

• 3 vanilla beans (instead of 2)
• 4 tablespoons of cream cheese added (because I wanted a tiny bit of tartness)
• wildflower honey from Texas (a gift from a friend)

Directions

1. Make the ice cream first because the milk mixture needs to steep for an hour, then cool before processing and allowing to set in the freezer.
2. When you make the ice cream, follow the directions in the link above.  If you’d like to include the cream cheese, make sure it’s softened and add the cream to it gradually, stirring until it’s well mixed.  Then proceed with the recipe.
3. While the ice cream is in one of its production stages, make the cookies and allow them to completely cool on wire racks.
4. When the ice cream is finished processing, scrape it into a container to sit in the freezer at least 1 hour before constructing the cookies
5. To build the cookies, divide the ice cream evenly and fill one cookie, topping with a second and pressing very lightly.  Place on a metal tray and return to the freezer to until ready to serve.
6. After the cookies have set, if not serving then, package each in a plastic baggie and seal well.

 

Recipe Notes:

• Many thanks to Elise of Simply Recipes for such a great oatmeal cookie recipe and to Heidi of 101 Cookbooks for sharing this fabulous vanilla ice cream recipe.  Interestingly enough, both are from way back in the archives. I spend quite a bit of time looking at recipes in cookbooks I own and searching through archives on-line to try new things, and it really paid off this time!
• I made these ice cream sandwiches for a dinner party where they received rave reviews.  They were large enough to half and share.
• The cookie holds up wonderfully with the ice cream.  Each bite is perfect with no ice cream squishing out the sides.  They had about two hours in the freezer before we at them, so that helped.
• I made fairly large cookies — about 4″ in diameter — and baked them about 12-13 minutes, switching trays in the oven halfway through the baking time.
• 1 batch makes about 11 sandwiches with maybe a cookie or two for sampling left over.
• I’ve tried many, many ice cream, gelato, frozen yogurt, sherbet recipes over the years and most often try to keep the fat at a minimum.  What I notice in the process is that although I may enjoy the product, it doesn’t always work well as an accompaniment — say for something like ice cream sandwiches.  This recipe is perfect for these and is far easier considering no custard is made.  Plus, if you’re not one to like an egg-based ice cream, then this one is for you. The ice cream is beautifully textured, it absolutely tastes like honey, and is sturdy enough to hold its shape in these sandwiches.  Really fabulous.
• Originally I was going to dip half the sandwich in chocolate, but am glad I didn’t.  I think the chocolate would over power the wonderful honey flavor in the ice cream.
• Many thanks to my wonderful husband (he really is) for always helping me when I need it.  He ran each one of these sandwiches down to the extra freezer as I made them to make sure they wouldn’t melt.  Nice man.  Very.

Tagged as: frozen, honey, manwich, oatmeal, raisins, vanilla bean