FOOD COLUMN: Ice-Cream Cookie Sandwich

Every cloud has a silver lining, even exam term. Admittedly, ‘cloud’ is an understatement – thunderstorms, lightening, torrential rain and extreme flooding convey more aptly the terror wrought by exams. However, the silver lining is something I can work with.

For exams require revision, revision requires revision breaks and, significantly, rewarding yourself. Reward comes in no better form than my ice-cream cookie sandwiches.

This recipe combines so many loves: the double chocolate cookies are chocolatey to the point of craziness and perfectly offset by a thick and creamy layer of ice cream. I make no apologies for their sugary sweet nature. They are incredibly rich, and yield a tender, fudgy chewiness with a sugary crisp outer layer.

The cookies can of course be eaten as they come. Or they can be crumbled and stirred through ice cream to create a DIY cookie ice-cream. There’s something slightly magical though about an ice-cream cookie sandwich that cannot be achieved through other means.

The recipe is simple enough. You simply mix up your cookie dough – trying not to eat the chocolate chunks as you go – then bake, before sandwiching with ice cream and freezing. It yields untold levels of joy to have such sources of culinary pleasure waiting for you to devour. That is, of course, if you can resist their charms for long enough to have a constantly ready supply going. You may need to double up batches to prepare for last-minute cravings.

Makes 5 sandwiches

Ingredients:

Full cup of salted butter (at room temperature and failing that – grate it, if really desperate, melt it – although gives cookies a different texture); ¾ cup brown sugar; tsp vanilla essence; 1 egg; 1.5 cups plain flour; 7 tablespoons cocoa powder; ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda; 170g white chocolate/maltesers/chocolate chips/whatever takes your fancy; tub of ice cream (vanilla/chocolate/white chocolate)

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C and line two baking trays with greaseproof paper.
2. Beat together the butter and sugar until combined with a wooden spoon. Add the vanilla and egg, then beat in.
3. Sift the flour and bicarbonate into the mix, then stir until it forms a dough.
4. Now you can divide your mixture into rounds. I find this mixture gets 10 cookies/5 sandwiches of perfect size if you divide each cookie into a 80g round of raw dough. Roll the dough with the palms of your hands to create balls of dough, then squash them slightly. Space them well apart on your trays.
5. Bake for 15 minutes. Allow to cool.
6. When cool, sandwich two cookies together with ice cream in between. Wrap individually in baking paper and then re-freeze.
7. Once frozen they are ready when you are….

You scream, I scream, we all scream for ice cream.