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.

It’s that time of year, isn’t it?  That rush-about-hustle-bustle-get-everything-done-on-time time of year, and it’s more that than it ever has been here.  A week ago, I was in bed recovering from knee surgery, and today, a week later, feeling pretty good about my physical therapy session today.  Christmas is in how many days?

Now that I think of it, we have few worries.  One of the perks of being an empty nester with three adult sons who aren’t married is having very little Christmas shopping to do.    We can actually think about strolling around this next weekend — maybe with one crutch in tow — enjoying ourselves, mulling over one choice for a present or another, taking advantage of the deals not available even a few weeks ago, and afterward treating ourselves to dinner somewhere with a crackling fire.  Yule Log on a flat screen would be more the reality around here, and I’d settle for that considering it’s supposed to rain this weekend.

On the other hand, I’ve been too leisurely about posting my second recipe for the Cookies We Love Challenge featuring sweets from Saveur’s “Smart Cookies:  Favorite Holiday Treats from Around the World.”

The first treat I made, Caramel Crumb Bars from New Zealand, disappeared fairly quickly, so they’ll be tough to top.  Because of my semi-ambulatory state, I settled for an easy to whip up recipe from Mexico next:  Galletas con Conchitos or Cookies with Sprinkles which could be made any time of the year, actually — especially if you are a busy person in desperate need of a tasty butter cookie, or someone with children who like to be involved in baking.

Mine were baked one evening, wrapped the next morning, and mailed to my son in San Francisco along with quite a few other holiday teeth rotting treats to share with his dorm buddies.  Or is it resident hall acquaintances?  No matter.  They won’t care if any of it is in one piece when it arrives, but I always ask.

Mexican Butter Cookies

1-1/2 c. flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. kosher salt
3/4 c. sugar
8 T unsalted butter, softened
1 tsp. vanilla extract, preferably Mexican*
3 egg yolks
1 egg white, lightly beaten
multicolored sprinkles, for decorating

In a medium bowl, whisk flour, baking powder, and salt. In a larger bowl, beat sugar, butter, and vanilla until fluffy, then add egg yolks one at a time mixing well after each addition. Add the dry ingredients and mix well. Scoop a generous tablespoon of the dough from the bowl and roll  into a ball.  Transfer to a lined baking sheet and using the end of a wooden spoon,  poke a hole in center of each ball. Chill for 1 hour. While the dough is chilling, preheat oven to 300°. Brush each ring with egg white, then dip into sprinkles to coat. Return to baking sheets; bake for 15 minutes. Let cool.  Makes about two dozen galletas.

Notes:

• The directions above are mine.  I decided to cut to the chase and avoid the whole rolling into a log, then cutting, then rolling, then cutting.  The tablespoon works.
• What doesn’t work — at least for me — is the sprinkles.  I’ve never made cookies before where the sprinkles go on before they’re baked.  Interesting.  Clearly, the jimmies weren’t the best idea.
• I chilled my dough for the entire hour.  Maybe even longer.  Regardless, I had spreadage.  I hate that.  Can someone please put me out of my misery on this?  I know it’s the water content in the butter, isn’t it?  Anyway, the very deep hole I poked into each ball flattened out almost entirely.  Go figure.
• The low baking temperature is also interesting.  I used a non-convection oven for exactly 15 minutes and they didn’t look quite done — pale in color and very soft.  My husband said they were, mumbling through a mouthful of warm cookie.  Buttery cookie.  Try and stop with just one even though they’re not as cute as you’d like them to be.
• The Caramel Crumb Bars are still in the lead.

Don’t forget to stop by my holiday baking buddies  who are most likely on cookie No. 3 by now.   Courtney of Coco Cooks,  Andrea of Andrea’s Recipes, Claire of The Barefoot Kitchen, Di of Di’s Kitchen Notebook, Judy of No Fear Entertaining, Michelle of Big Black Dogs, RJ of Flamingo Musings, Sandy of At the Baker’s Bench, and Tiffany of The Nesting Project.

While many others in the Northern Hemisphere are enjoying the first snow of the season, I’m admiring from afar, surprised by our own low temperatures which have hovered near 40 on a few nights. It’s been enough to coerce me to turn on the heater and take the chill off the house, but not more than that, because it’s nice to have some sense of a change of seasons.

Our family has never decorated our home for Christmas until a week or so before the holiday, so the days immediately following Thanksgiving have always presented a time to consider the simplicity of the season. We won’t venture down to our favorite tree lot until a week or so before Christmas, and decorations will remain in their boxes until then. I’ve wondered whether to wait even longer this year since our youngest isn’t expected home for the semester break until the 19th.

Decisions, decisions.

In the meantime, I’m happy to have been invited again to participate in a holiday cookie fest of with a group of the loveliest people. Two years ago, we took on Gourmet and  Christmas cookies from 40 years of publication. Last year, it was Bon Appetit, and 12 cookie recipes in 12 days. This year, we’re choosing from Saveur’s collection of Christmas Cookies, and presenting one a week.

Each year, I’ve had some excuse for my lack of follow through on the task, whether it was an overwhelming home remodel, an adjustment to working life after three years of retirement, or in the case of this year, knee surgery with lots of physical therapy to follow.   We’ll see how it goes.

This year, our group is comprised of Courtney of Coco Cooks,  Andrea of Andrea’s Recipes, Claire of The Barefoot Kitchen, Di of Di’s Kitchen Notebook, Judy of No Fear Entertaining, Michelle of Big Black Dogs, RJ of Flamingo Musings, Sandy of At the Baker’s Bench, and Tiffany of The Nesting Project.

Ready?

Caramel Crumb Bars

To see the recipe, please visit Saveur here.

You’ll need lots of softened butter for this recipe, so a plan to give them away after you’ve sampled them is definitely a good one.

The dough comes together quickly and is soft, reminding me a bit of pie dough.

It’s pressed into a small, rimmed baking sheet layered with parchment, greased, and floured. I always wonder if all of that is truly necessary when there’s so much butter in a recipe.

Sweetened, condensed milk is mixed with sugar, more butter, vanilla, and just a touch of corn syrup.

Take a minute or two, maybe three or four to watch the thick stream of milk drizzle over the cube of butter, pouring with one hand, and shooting with the other. Then, get back to business wondering just how this particular caramel recipe will come together since it’s so different from any you’ve made.

Spread the caramel onto the chilled dough, and because you can’t keep to a recipe the way it’s meant to be made even if your life depended on it, sprinkle a couple of hand fulls of raw pecan pieces over the caramel.

Then sprinkle a bit of the remaining dough crumbs over the top, while noticing the size of them and confirming that the idea of chilling to ease crumbling and produce smaller pieces would have been a great thing to do. Next time?

Into the oven it goes where the caramel browns quite a bit, and the crumbs not so much, taking longer than expected. The aroma is lovely, however.

Let them cool a bit, then wonder that if the caramel hardens, it may become difficult to section the bars and give in to getting that task done. Only one or two crumbly casualties quickly become samples forcing a cold cup of tea to spend time in the microwave to wash it all down. The crust is a bit like shortbread, then nuts add a pleasant crunch, and the caramel is chewy.   A pleasant mouthful, I think.

Decide whether to coerce your significant other to take them to work, or wonder just how well they’d hold up in the mail and send them to one of your sons. They’re not that sturdy, so the mail option isn’t a good one for this batch. They shouldn’t last long on the cookie platter, though.

Don’t forget to stop by my baking buddies to see what they’ve got coming from their ovens this holiday season!

Notes:

• The caramel is interesting.  It bubbles as caramel does, but not in the huge way it does when the sugar melts first, then the milk is added.  It thickens as you stir and becomes a bit floury looking or even dry.  The color doesn’t really change all that much, but the consistency is what makes it interesting.  I wanted to take it off the heat at the 5-6 minute mark instead of the 8-10 stated in the recipe.
• The directions state that these cookies need to bake for 25-30 minutes.  After checking at each of those points, I left mine in for 35 mostly to brown the crumb on the top.  I’m thinking that if the crumb had been smaller, 30 would have been fine.
• The crust is fairly crumbly, and although it holds up to cutting, expect some breakage.
• I’m glad I added the pecans and was wondering about some mini-chocolate chips.  Perhaps I have Snickers on the brain.

At this time of year in particular, when stopping by to visit the site of someone who lives in a more northern region of the country, I’m often indulged with engaging scenes and descriptions of wintery weather.  Narratives filled with tantalizing visions of powdery snow, icicles glistening in the morning light, and brightly colored birds flashing through bare trees lull me into a mood that has me wanting to cozy up with a good book and a hot cup of anything I can get my hands on.

The reverie lasts only briefly as I cast my gaze out the window to see a bright blue sky punctuated by wispy clouds, brilliant green foliage on trees and shrubs, camellias in full bloom, and sea gulls pacing about, waiting for a morning snack.  Those of us who choose to don a scarf most likely do so to make some sort of fashion statement, or to convince ourselves that it truly is December and that as much as we might be a bit chilly in the early morning, by noon, it will be a pleasant 70 degrees.

It makes good sense, then, to consider that snowmen cookies are one way to enjoy the season.  They’re a soft bite of spice that just might surprise you and are guaranteed not to melt on a sunny day.

Dorie Greenspan’s Spice Roll-Out Cookies

• These are surprisingly wonderful cookies.  I’m not a great fan of gingerbread cookies, but that’s most likely because they can be a bit too sharp in flavor and a bit too crunchy for my taste.  These cookies are neither.  Make sure you don’t over bake them, though.
• You may have noticed the dried mustard in the ingredient list.  Don’t turn your nose up.  Try it.  Although the uncooked dough is more spicy in flavor than the finished cookie, there is no mustard flavor at all.  It’s a flavor enhancer.  The combination of spices in this recipe is very nice.
• I found that setting the cut outs on the baking sheet and then in the freezer for 15 minutes before baking works extremely well.
• If you want to make ornaments of your cookies, use a regular drinking straw to press a hole in the cookie before baking.
• I made the dough for these cookies 2 days before I got around to making them.   Wrapped in plastic and pressed into a disk before chilling works well.  A quick pop in the freezer between cutting and re-rolling also works.
• I used huge cookie cutters for this recipe.  Three snowmen, three Christmas trees, and 13 stars about 3-4 inches across came out of one batch.
• I used a standard royal icing recipe (with powdered egg whites) but added enough water to create the consistency I wanted.
• Wrap the cookies well to store them as they will continue to soften.

Don’t forget to check out my fellow cookie bakers this holiday season.  Claire of The Barefoot Kitchen, Courtney of Coco Cooks, and Judy of No Fear Entertaining who are all returning this year, and Michelle of Big Black Dog, Di of Di’s Kitchen Notebook, Renee of Flamingo Musings, and Tiffany of The Nesting Project who will be joining us this year.  A special nod goes to Andrea of Andrea’s Recipes who started the group last year, but cannot join in on the craziness this year.

It was only a matter of time before I gave into temptation and changed one of the cookie recipes I’ve been sampling from Bon Appetit’s Holiday Cookie assortment this year.  Actually, that’s only partially true.  The collection includes several mix and drop cookies, and I strayed early on to experiment with a recipe for the perfect oatmeal cookie that I may share, but I digress.

When I saw the festive-looking Chocolate Candy Cane Cookies, I truly wanted to try them — but without the peppermint. I decided that if a hazelnut chocolate chip cookie could be classified as a holiday cookie, then why not chocolate and caramel?  All I needed to do was find a different filling for them since peppermint and caramel aren’t flavors I’d want to sample in one bite.

There happened to be some mascarpone in the fridge, and if I used a few drops of…

Chocolate Caramel Cookies with Orange Mascarpone Cream

For the cookies…

• 1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (preferably Dutch-process)
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 large egg

For the filling…

• 4 oz. (1/2 stick) unsalted butter at room temp
• 4 oz. mascarpone or cream cheese, softened
• 1-1/2 c. powdered sugar
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla
• 1/4 tsp. orange extract

• One bad of hard caramel candies, crushed

Don’t forget to check out my fellow cookie bakers this holiday season.  Claire of The Barefoot Kitchen, Courtney of Coco Cooks, and Judy of No Fear Entertaining who are all returning this year, and Michelle of Big Black Dog, Di of Di’s Kitchen Notebook, Renee of Flamingo Musings, and Tiffany of The Nesting Project who will be joining us this year.  A special nod goes to Andrea of Andrea’s Recipes who started the group last year, but cannot join in on the craziness this year.

The math isn’t exactly challenging:  12 cookies in 12 days; this is December 11th; tomorrow is the last day; and I have posted five cookies.  Five.  Bear in mind that I’ve made eight, and have dough for a ninth sitting in the fridge just waiting for several hours of time so that I can play my favorite holiday music, spread out my materials, and decorate cookies.  Trust me when I say that time between the hours of 6 and 10 p.m. does not count as an available chunk.  Once upon a time I could have been extremely productive at that time of day, but no longer.  It’s easy to conclude then that I will be engaging more in a month of cookies, or something like that.  And perhaps I’ll throw in a holiday bread or two.  Maybe.

Nevertheless, here are my Hazelnut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies, which not only look like ordinary chocolate chippers, they taste like ordinary chocolate chippers.  That isn’t a bad thing if you’re me, because chocolate chip cookies will always be my favorite cookie even though I’d never consider it a holiday cookie.

I had hazelnuts in the pantry, so decided to make my own hazelnut butter for these.  It’s not complicated if you have a Cuisinart, 10 minutes, and don’t mind telling your neighbors to prepare for the sound of nuts clacking crazily against plastic.

Hazelnut-Butter Cookies with Chocolate Chips

Don’t forget to check out my fellow cookie bakers this holiday season.  Claire of The Barefoot Kitchen, Courtney of Coco Cooks, and Judy of No Fear Entertaining who are all returning this year, and Michelle of Big Black Dog, Di of Di’s Kitchen Notebook, Renee of Flamingo Musings, and Tiffany of The Nesting Project who will be joining us this year.  A special nod goes to Andrea of Andrea’s Recipes who started the group last year, but cannot join in on the craziness this year.