The Ice Cream Man is Coming!

Well, actually, he already came and went and to be accurate it was an 'Ice Cream Woman.'  Just for further clarification, and as much as I like the idea of it, I wasn't driving a rickety old truck playing a hundred year old record of the Mr Softee Song and making the folks at Gilda's Club or Ronald McDonald house chase me down the street waving a dollar bill! Ok, I can not write or even think about that image without having the memory of the Eddie Murphy in his 'Ice Cream' stand up routine - in an effort to keep my blog "G" rated, I won't embed the YouTube video, but you can follow the link at your risk, and if his red leather outfit doesn't get you laughing, the skit sure will ...'I got some ice cream!'


But it is finally summer in Buffalo and it seemed fitting for the temperatures we've been having lately to follow through on the 'ice cream cookie' idea.. Gilda's Club got Brownie Peanut Butter Ice Cream Sandwiches.  For these I made a couple of big sheets of brownies and then sandwiched some doctored up light vanilla ice cream between them, froze the whole thing and then cut them up into single serving ice cream bars. For clarification, don't be fooled, the ice cream was light to start, but not when I finished folding in about a 1/2 cup of peanut butter and chopped cocktail peanuts (for about 30 sandwiches).  And the Martha recipe I'm referring that provided the basis for this wasn't really followed as written either since I thought the brownie part had WAY too much butter.  Instead I used a lighter version for the brownie which I'll try to get around to typing up and posting - but again, 'lighter' isn't necessarily 'light.'  However, the beauty of this recipe was being able to kind of make them all at once - similar to bar cookies.  So I'll also admit that this may indeed be the first "non-cookie" for the cookie project.

For Ronald McDonald house I had a bit of repeat by making the chocolate cookies from the outside of the homemade oreos and then individually filling them with mint chocolate chip ice cream.
I know, ice cream 'grasshoppers' ...yum!

Between the filling and the freezing I couldn't really do the volume necessary for Glida's Club with all ice cream sandwiches so to kind of counter acted the rich brownies and ice cream by accompanying them with a light cookie: Toasted Coconut Chocolate Chunk Cookies.  I did a bit of substituting here also as I didn't have the dark chocolate so I replaced it with white chocolate chips.  I think they made the cookie a little sweeter than intended but it kept it true on nutritional information and paired well with the coconut.  So that's the word on the this past week's cookies and can't wait to do a follow up on the Ride for Roswell - another successful, emotional and awesome event!