How to Make Homemade Ice Cream Sandwiches

Last updated on January 9, 2015 by Liza Hawkins

Nothing replaces the fun and excitement of racing out the front door to buy a frozen treat from the ice cream truck. That is, if you’re under 10 years old.

As parents we cringe when we hear the loud, calliope music bellowing from a couple streets away. Please skip our court, please skip our court. It never skips our court. The over-priced $3.00 ice pops are worthy of many parental eye rolls, and don’t get me started on the latest evolution in ice cream trucks: Kona Ice.

Some of our friends were smart. They told their kids that the they were either “music trucks,” OR (my personal favorite) that when the ice cream trucks played music, it meant they were out of ice cream. Ha-ha. {slow. clap.}

Do we forbid ice cream truck treats? Nope. But we also don’t say, “YES!” every. single. time.

Instead I’ve started making simple homemade popsicles out of juice and fresh fruit, or treats like these mango smoothies, and last week I made homemade ice cream sandwiches – which turned out to be far easier than I could have imagined!

Here’s how to make homemade ice cream sandwiches:

1. Bake and cool a batch of soft and chewy chocolate chip cookies. I made mine bigger than normal, which seemed like a good idea at the time, but proved TOO big to eat one sandwich in a sitting. Next time I’ll just make regular sized cookies and construct “mini” ice cream sandwiches. Also? If you’re baking the cookies right before constructing the ice cream sandwiches, you’ll want to cool the cookies in the fridge beforehand. Warm cookies and ice cream just don’t go well together…
2. Microwave your ice cream for 15-20 seconds before trying to make the homemade ice cream sandwiches. Trust me. If you don’t have sufficiently soft ice cream, you’ll end up with ice cream sandwich crumbles on your hands (or your counter tops).
3. Wrap the homemade ice cream sandwiches tightly in plastic wrap and then freeze them for at least 2 hours. I know, I know. You Your kids will want to dive right into these yummy ice cream sandwiches right after you’ve finished building them. But, they need to set up a bit before your first bite. They just do.
4. Refreeze what you can’t eat in one sitting. See the first step. I made our homemade ice cream sandwiches way too big the first time, so we ate what we could and called it quits. THEN we wrapped the leftovers in plastic wrap and threw them back into the freezer to munch on over the next few days. Worked beautifully!

The hardest part of it all will be deciding which flavors to put together! The chocolate chip cookies I used for the sandwich worked great with both mint chocolate chip and chocolate M&M ice cream we already had on hand. Next time though? Hmmmm…