Valentine’s Cookie Ice Cream Sandwiches
You know what is the opposite of the lovey-dovey feeling Valentine’s brings to some of us? Fighting with your ice cream maker for a week. I originally wanted to make a glorious, luxurious red velvet ice cream for these sandwiches (that would have been awesome, right)? Well, batch #1 didn’t freeze at all. It churned and churned, but not even the tiniest ice crystal formed. I wasn’t all that surprised – making ice cream is sort of a science, and if the pH of the mixture is off by a little bit, it won’t set. The red velvet ice cream mixture had buttermilk in it, so I chalked it up to the buttermilk making the mix too acidic and figured I would try again the following day.
Batches #2 and #3 (each time with less buttermilk) churned and churned, and still, not an ice crystal in sight. At this point, I decided to give up on the red velvet dream (and sadly, call off the guest post I had planned to do with this recipe). The ingredients were getting too expensive to risk another failed batch of ice cream, so I turned to the most trusty source possible for a “this will work” ice cream recipe – the booklet that came with the ice cream maker. I settled on a nice raspberry ice cream, and churned….
And churned. Nothing. I stuck a probe thermometer into the depths of the milky-raspberry liquid and discovered the problem – the mixture was rolling at 44 degrees. At that temperature, it would NEVER freeze. Why was this happening? Oh, turns out that the garage freezer where I keep the ice cream maker’s canister was cold enough to freeze water and lunchbox ice packets, but NOT cold enough to freeze this canister. Are you kidding me?!? An overnight trip into the real freezer inside fixed this little problem, and I was able to re-churn my batch of raspberry ice cream with success. But man, I probably should have just given up and served Light Valentine’s Day Dessert Shooters a long time ago.
Words do not describe how frustrating it was to find out that I had wasted two batches of ice cream mix because I thought there was something wrong with the recipe. Luckily, a little bit of ice cream and/or a cookie can alleviate almost any frustration. And what about a big scoop of ice cream sandwiched between TWO cookies? Well, that’s even better.
Valentine’s M & M Cookies
Yield: About 30 cookies
- 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
- 3/4 cup granulated sugar
- 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 large eggs
- 2 cups (12 ounce package) Valentine-colored M & M’s
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
- In small bowl, stir together flour, baking soda and salt. Beat butter, sugar, brown sugar and vanilla in large mixer bowl until creamy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Gradually beat in flour mixture. Stir in M & M’s. Drop by 2-tablespoon-fuls onto parchment-lined baking sheets.
- Bake 9 to 10 minutes or until golden brown. Cool on baking sheets for 2 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely.
Adapted from Nestle Tollhouse
Fresh Raspberry Ice Cream
Yield: About 4 cups
- 1-1/2 cups fresh raspberries
- 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
- 3/4 cup granulated sugar, divided
- 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons whole milk
- 1-1/2 cups plus 2 tablespoons heavy cream
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- In small bowl, stir together raspberries, lemon juice and 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar; let stand at room temperature 2 hours. Transfer to blender or food processor and process until smooth. Pass mixture through fine-mesh strainer to remove seeds.
- Place milk and remaining 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar in mixing bowl; mix on medium-low speed 2 minutes or until sugar is dissolved. Add cream, vanilla and strained raspberry juice; mix on low 1 minute or until well combined.
- Pour mixture into your ice cream machine and freeze according to instructions for your machine (mine took about 25 minutes). Transfer ice cream to freezer to harden completely (at least 4 hours).
Adapted from Cuisinart
Valentine’s Cookie Ice Cream Sandwiches
Yield: 15 cookie sandwiches
- 30 Valentine’s M & M Cookies
- 3-3/4 cups Fresh Raspberry Ice Cream
- Turn cookies over so that flat sides face up. Place 1/4 cup scoop of ice cream onto half of cookies. Press remaining cookies onto ice cream to form sandwiches (if cookies crack when pressing, let ice cream soften for a few minutes before pressing top cookies on).
Lori, sorry to hear about your ice cream troubles! These sandwiches look decilious and raspberry is one of my favorite flavors. I have a cruisinart ice cream machine and may need to give this recipe a whirl!
Oh no! That stinks (also I’m mighty jealous that you have a second freezer, what I wouldn’t give for one). At least you figured out the problem and you have ice cream cookie sandwiches to cheer you up!
Haha, we came across that second freezer by happenstance. When we moved into this house, the fridge/freezer REEKED of curry. I scrubbed, sanitized, and baking powdered it within an inch of it’s life, and couldn’t fix it. We moved it out to the garage and got a new fridge. Somehow, it’s sort of aired out a bit in the garage over the years, and now we have a second fridge/freezer. It IS nice to have 🙂
Yay for Cuisinart ice cream makers! I’m a big fan of them. I used the Strawberry Ice Cream recipe from the booklet, just changed it to raspberries 🙂
Happy Valentine’s Day to me! The problem is that the ice cream cookies are so good that I have eaten almost all of them . . . Like, it is really hard, to make them last to the holiday.
You better cut it out! You’ll have no dessert on actual V-day!
oh no! Well, at least you ended up with this yummy fresh raspberry ice cream. . looks great sandwiched between those cookies! I also have another fridge/freezer. . in my garage but it’s my smelly food fridge (for kimchi and other smelly garlicky and korean food stuff) and now that I have the blog, I’m so glad we have it b/c I would not be able to keep everything I make in one refrigerator or freezer.
Haha, see below for how my extra fridge STARTED OUT as the smelly food fridge 😉 Between my husband home-brewing and smoking his own meet, and my food blog, I’m not sure what we could do without that extra fridge!
I am all over that raspberry ice cream!!! Love the color!!! The same thing happened to me when I had the ice cream canister in my garage freezer, funny huh???
Thanks Tara! I was surprised with how pink it actually turned out, just from raspberry puree. I love it.
I’m so surprised about that dang freezer. Funny thing is I kept the ice cream canister in the garage freezer ALL SUMMER LONG, made multiple batches of ice cream, and everything was fine. But now that it’s actually freezing temperatures outside (thus, in the garage), it’s no longer freezing it?!? Maybe the freezer is somehow trying to compensate for the freezing temperatures in the garage, or maybe it’s just on it’s last legs or something.
It was weird, everything else was fine, rock hard frozen.
This looks the best. Raspberry ice cream? Dude. Yum. Totally worth the failed batches!
Thanks Sarah. I’m pretty excited that I have a bunch of extra ice cream in the freezer, ’cause I didn’t actually make 15 cookie sandwiches (may have eaten too many cookies before they met their fate with ice cream…). haha 🙂
Ohmahgaaaaawd I’d be tearing my hair out and punching holes in the wall. Wasting time and ingredients and money drives me crazy. And THEN to find out it was because the canister wasn’t cold enough? Gaaaah! I feel for ya, girl. But at least you finally got the ice cream to churn and you created these gorgeous, pink, delightful ice cream sandwiches. I hope eating a dozen of these made you forget about all the heartache and frustration!
Ahhhhh, I know. I’m glad /not glad that somebody understands how frustrating it can be! STUPID CANISTER. Well, STUPID FREEZER THAT CAN’T FREEZE THINGS PROPERLY. I must admit though, that eating a few of these did make me feel a little better 🙂
NO WAY!! I did the same thing with my ice cream maker’s canister and about gave up, thinking myself a forever failure with ice cream. I also had a copy of The College Cookbook in college. Our favorite was the Cold Dorm Drink made with jell-o. Makes me shudder just thinking about it now. Ha!
Ok, it makes me feel a little better that I’m not the only one that’s happened to! I felt like such a dork when I (finally) read the instruction manual, and it said something about shaking the canister to make sure you can’t hear liquid before you use it. I guess I’ll always be shaking it from now on!
Ahhh… The College Cookbook! I kinda wish I still had a copy (it was my roommate’s), but maybe it’s best that I don’t. “Classics” like enchilada casserole that is approximately 50% cheese probably don’t need to be revived 😉
Lori, sounds like these were a labor of love, love of baking that is! Glad you persevered ’cause these look amazing, thanks for the awesome recipe!
Awww, thanks so much Robyn. Toward the end there, they were a labor of frustration, but it was totally worth it in the end 🙂
These sandwiches are beautiful! Well worth all that trouble. I have an extra freezer too and I’m always checking it to make sure it’s running cold enough. I have tons of important and expensive food in there.
Eek! I really don’t trust that other fridge/freezer at all now. Which stinks, because right now my primary fridge is just LOADED with blog/recipe development stuff, and I could really use some extra space! I might have to get a new “backup” fridge/freezer.