rice cakes & ice cream?  Oh, yeah!

This time of year, you can always find an abundance of ice cream and ice cream related recipes.  I loved Real  Simple magazine’s recipes on ice cream sandwiches made from cookies that they featured recently.  Like s’mores, these treats are a summer standard in the dessert category.  Unfortunately, Real Simple  left out the two BEST combinations…the nerve!  Here is a glimpse of my two favorites…

A photo of one of my favorite diy ice cream sandwiches: ginger cookies filled with key lime ice cream and rolled in coconut. The ginger cookie recipe is included at the end of this post.

The first combination is ginger cookies filled with key lime pie ice cream and rolled in coconut. To be really decadent, white chocolate can be drizzled on the top.  There are a lot of good ginger cookie recipes.  I usually don’t have crystallized ginger in the house, so I use the recipe I included at the end of this post because it doesn’t require it.

A photo of the ginger cookies used to make the ice cream sandwiches…the recipe is included at the end of this post.

I think the key to a good ginger cookie is a good ginger spice.  I use Penzy’s spices.  There is no spice like it.  It is amazingly flavorful.   If I have crystallized ginger in the house, I use Ina Garten’s recipe, which is really great and calls for the crystallized ginger.  The ice cream, if store bought, really needs to be Ciao Bella, Key Lime Graham.   No other brand or flavor compares.  Of course, if you have a shop that makes homemade nearby, that is a great option.

The second  ice cream sandwich I adore uses rice cakes in place of the cookies.  It is a combination of rice cakes, smooth peanut butter, and a good quality vanilla ice cream (or frozen yogurt).  I used Breyers.  I first came up with this combination during one of my pregnancies, and I thought the pregnancy cravings were what made it taste so good.  I was wrong.  I like them just as well when I am not pregnant!

A photo of one of my favorite ice cream sandwiches…rice cake, peanut butter, and vanilla ice cream!

I have a store locally (Stew Leonards) that makes their own rice cakes and, in recent years, also sells them with drizzled chocolate…I used the chocolate enhanced ones for this post  :)  Just spread the insides of both rice cakes with the peanut butter  before sandwiching the vanilla ice cream in the middle.

The ginger cookie recipe follows.  Hope you enjoy my favorites and hope this gets your creative juices flowing to come up with some of your own favorite combos!  Let me know if you come up with some good ones!  Thanks for visiting.  Enjoy, Jackie

Ginger Cookies

Ingredients

• 1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 cup light brown sugar
• 1/4 cup unsulphured molasses
• 2 large egg whites
• 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 2 2/3 cups all purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1-2  teaspoons ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 cup white sugar (for rolling)

Directions

In the bowl of your electric mixer (or with a hand mixer), beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy (about 2 – 3 minutes). Add the molasses, egg whites, and vanilla extract and beat until incorporated. In a separate bowl whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, and spices. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and mix until well combined. Cover the batter with plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator for about 60 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.   Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Place about 1 cup of white granulated sugar in a medium sized bowl. When the dough has chilled sufficiently, roll into 1 inch balls. Then roll the balls of dough into the sugar, coating them thoroughly. Place on the baking sheet, spacing about 2 inches apart and, with the bottom of a glass, flatten the cookies slightly. Bake for about 8 – 10 minutes or until the cookies are firm but are still a little soft in the centers. (The longer the cookies bake, the more crisp they will be.   For the purposes of an ice cream sandwich, you don’t want them crisp since that would make them hard to eat.)  Cool on a wire rack.

Makes about 4 dozen cookies.

Recipe adapted From:  Mendelson, Susan & Cruz, Joey. The Lazy Gourmet. Whitecap Books. Vancouver/Toronto: 2000.