Sweet treats
Let the kids help you make these strawberry ice cream sandwiches
One of the best things about summer, especially if you’ve got kids or grandkids, is all the ice cream you get to eat to cool off, no excuses necessary. And it’s relatively easy to make, even if you don’t have an ice cream maker, if you go with a no-churn recipe in which whipped cream is gently folded into a sweetened condensed milk enriched with vanilla and other flavorings, like fresh fruit or spices.
My 2-year-old granddaughter Greta’s current favorite is “pink” ice cream, both colored by and studded with chunks of strawberry. She also recently discovered ice cream sandwiches, and is such a fan that, on a recent visit, I watched her try to eat the paper wrapping on one after polishing off the cookie in an attempt to get every single drop of flavor possible into her mouth.
It made me decide we should try our hands at making them at home, stirring the chocolate cookie batter together in a big bowl on the kitchen counter after mixing the ingredients for the ice cream and pouring it into a loaf pan to freeze overnight.
It was a fun way to spend some one-on-one time together, and the sheer joy she expressed when we unwrapped “her” finished sandwiches the next day at her baby brother Sean’s baptism party was priceless. My adult children loved them, too, as a latenight munchie.
This recipe, adapted from Smitten Kitchen, is both super easy and super satisfying. I went slightly off script by cutting the sheet pan-sized cookie into individual squares to make the individual sandwiches, which meant some of my cookies crumbled before being stuffed. (I didn’t have an offset spatula to smooth the batter.) As a result, the sandwiches weren’t picture perfect. (I saved the broken bits to crumble on top of ice cream as a sundae). But they were still pretty tasty, a great introduction to baking for a toddler — and a sweet start to everyone’s summer vacation.
HOMEMADE STRAWBERRY ICE CREAM SANDWICHES INGREDIENTS
For the ice cream:
1 pound frozen strawberries, slightly thawed 14-ounce can sweetened