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Tiny Ice Cream Sandwiches

Earlier this week, I made tiny ice cream sandwiches as one of the desserts for a small dinner party at our apartment. I started with making a few trays of thin, buttery, chocolate almond pecan cookies, where each cookie was roughly the size of a large poker chip. I made these a day in advance, and kept them covered in a plastic container so that they would stay soft and fresh.
When we were ready to serve dessert the following evening, I added a scoop of ice cream between two cookies to make a tray of baby ice cream sandwiches. They were adorable, and people really enjoyed them. Try to work quickly so the ice cream doesn’t melt, or send the sandwiches out in stages as you assemble them!
I was lazy, and did not make the ice cream from scratch—But you easily could.

Ingredients

  • 6 Tbsp salted butter, softened
  • ½ cup white granulated sugar
  • 1/3 cup packed brown sugar
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1 whole egg
  • 1/8 tsp kosher salt
  • ¾ tsp baking soda
  • 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1/3 cup chocolate chips, very finely minced
  • 1/3 cup peeled almonds, very finely minced
  • 1/3 cup pecans, very finely minced
  • 50 whole pecans, for pressing into the center of each cookie when they are halfway cooked-through in the oven
  • 2 pints of dulce de leche ice cream, or your ice cream of choice

Instructions

  • Preheat the oven to 350F.
  • Cream together the softened salted butter with the white granulated sugar and the brown sugar.
  • Add the vanilla extract and whole egg, and whisk together until completely combined.
  • Add the kosher salt, baking soda, and all-purpose flour and mix until the flour is almost fully incorporated into the sugar, butter, and egg mixture.
  • If the cookie dough feels like it has too much moisture for your liking, add another tablespoon or two of all-purpose flour.
  • Make sure your chocolate chips, almonds, and pecans are very finely minced, as this will help to ensure the cookies spread out and bake evenly in the oven.
  • Stir the finely-minced chocolate and nuts into the cookie dough until evenly distributed.
  • *Try to avoid overmixing the cookie dough batter while you incorporate the chocolate and nuts.
  • Place a piece of parchment paper on a sheet tray.
  • Use a teaspoon to measure out evenly-sized teaspoons of batter distributed across the parchment paper.
  • *To ensure that the cookies are equal in size, press the cookie dough into the measuring teaspoon to fill it up completely, and scrape off any excess dough that goes beyond the top of the measuring spoon before placing the teaspoons of dough onto the parchment paper.
  • Very lightly wet your hands with water, and carefully shape the small teaspoons of dough into perfect circles, pressing them down lightly and shaping them until each cookie has the exact same height and size before being baked.
  • *If you prefer more rustic-looking ice cream sandwiches, don’t worry too much about this cookie-shaping step!
  • Bake the cookies in the oven at 350F for 5 minutes, or until the cookies have spread out to their final size and are still very soft in the center.
  • Quickly remove the cookies from the oven and press one whole pecan down into the center of each cookie.
  • *You could also use chocolate chips, or whatever you wanted here.
  • Return the cookies to the oven and bake for an additional 5-8 minutes, or until the cookies are fully cooked.
  • Remove the cookies from the oven and allow them to cool at room temperature.
  • When the cookies have completely cooled, carefully cover them with plastic wrap until you are ready to assemble your ice cream sandwiches.
  • Roughly 5-10 minutes before you are ready to assemble your ice cream sandwiches and serve dessert, remove your ice cream from the freezer.
  • When the ice cream has softened enough to scoop with relative ease, quickly assemble the ice cream sandwiches, placing a large scoop of ice cream between two cookies.
  • Gently press the cookies together to allow the scoop of ice cream to flatten out and more evenly fill the gap between the cookies.
  • Serve immediately and enjoy.

Notes

You can assemble the ice cream sandwiches in advance and freeze them, if you don’t want to assemble them immediately before serving.
I prefer using unfrozen cookies and scooping the ice cream to assemble them right before serving them, because I love the texture of the soft cookie when it is unfrozen.
You can shape your cookies into small disks and freeze whatever you don’t want to bake that night. These would be great to have on hand for a night when you want to quickly bake 4-6 cookies and make yourself a few ice cream sandwiches at home.