Ginger Cookie Ice-Cream Sandwich Recipe

“…stop pacing the aisles and counting the miles. Instead, climb more mountains, eat more ice cream, go barefoot oftener, swim more rivers, watch more sunsets, laugh more and cry less. Life must be lived as we go along. ” 
~ Robert J. Hastings

You’ll love these tasty ice-cream treats. They are easy enough for the kids to make, and sophisticated enough that you could serve them as a dessert at your next grown-ups dinner party.

A few weeks ago a girlfriend came to stay down here at the farm. She’s working on a novel with a rural setting right now so we hooked her up with a friend of ours – an old country gentleman in his early eighties who is full of stories and bush yarns – so she could get some character and story ideas.

Whenever Geoff comes to visit I always make sure that my biscuit tin is full and that I have ample remaining to send some home for he and his wife. These crispy ginger cookies were quick to rustle up, and a single batch was enough to feed us well over a cuppa, put a good quantity in a care package and still have some left to play with.

Quite by accident we discovered that they make a fabulous foundation for ice-cream sandwiches. Happy-happy!

I hope you love them as much as we do 🙂

Cookie Ingredients

• 250 grams salted butter
• 250 grams sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon treacle, molasses or golden syrup
• 2 and 1/2 cups plain flour
• 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 1 tablespoon of ground ginger (or more – to taste)

Method:

1. Preheat your oven to moderate (160 degree celcius fan-forced or 180 degree oven – 350 degrees fahrenheit).
2. Line some baking trays with baking paper or lightly grease them.
3. Cream the butter and sugar until soft and fluffy. I use an electric mixer for this beating on low to combine and then on high speed until butter is pale and creamy.
4. Add egg and syrup and mix well.
5. Sift dry ingredients together and then add to mixture and beat on low speed until combined.
6. Roll spoonfuls of mixture (I used a dessert spoon) and place on the trays. Flatten slightly with your fingers or a fork dipped in flour to prevent it sticking to the dough.
7. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until golden.
8. Cool on trays for five minutes and then place on a wire rack to cool completely.
9. We made about thirty cookies, maybe a few more. This is not including the ones we ate warm or the dough that got eaten directly out of the mixing bowl… 
10. Store the cooled cookies in an airtight tin for up to ten days.

You could just go ahead and enjoy these ginger cookies plain, but oh my how good they are when you turn them into ice-cream sandwiches.

Ginger Cookie Ice-Cream Sandwich

Two cookies and a couple of tablespoons of ice-cream per sandwich . Make sure to make up cookies that are roughly the same size!

Take some slightly softened ice-cream (I used vanilla because it was all we had) and place it on the centre of the bottom cookie so that it almost to the edges. Place another cookie on top and then use a spoon to smooth the ice-cream level with the sides of the cookies. Wipe any excess ice-cream off the cookie with the spoon, a clean finger or clean soft cloth.

Eat straight away or return to freezer until needed.

Top Tip: If you want your ice-cream sandwiches super-fancy roll the soft ice-cream edge in chocolate sprinkles, toasted coconut, crushed nuts or grated chocolate.

PS – I love this hilarious pic of our two dogs, Harry and Rufous eyeing off that ice-cream sandwich with serious intent gazing adoringly at me!