Ice Cream Sandwiches

Justin's dad's birthday was this week, so we went over to his parents' house last night to celebrate and have dinner. Justin got his dad some manly grill gifts, but I wanted to give him something special from me. Knowing that Justin's dad likes ice cream sandwiches, I decided to make homemade (or semi-homemade) ice cream sandwiches. I've made ice cream sandwiches before using chocolate chip cookies, but the cookies don't stay soft when they're stored in the freezer. I decided that this time I was going to try to use cake as the "sandwich" part. Luckily Justin gave me a whoopie pie pan for Christmas this year:

I figured that this pan would be great to use for ice cream sandwiches; all of the mini-cakes would come out the same size.


What I used for this recipe:
1 box chocolate cake mix (yes, I consider this cheating)
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 1/4 cups water
3 eggs (I actually forgot to add the eggs; oops!)


1 1/2 quarts vanilla ice cream (I just bought whatever was on sale)


How I did it:
The cake mix box instructed to preheat the oven to 350 degrees. I mixed the cake mix with the additional ingredients listed on the box (except for the eggs because I forgot!). Fill the whoopie pie pan (that is greased with non-stick cooking spray) with the mixture; I put approximately 3 spoonfuls into each mini-cake. Next time I think I'd only put 2 spoonfuls in each because each sandwich side blossomed into a muffin-top kind of pastry which turned into a problem later... 


I had a little bit of the mixture left over, so instead of waiting for the first pan to cook, I just dropped rounded spoonfuls (again, 3) onto a greased cookie sheet. I put both pans in the preheated oven for about 18 minutes. I checked them with a toothpick every 5 minutes because I wasn't sure exactly how long they would take to bake.


After the toothpick came out clean, I took both pans out of the oven. I let everything sit for 10 minutes and then moved the cookie-sheet sandwich sides to a piece of tinfoil (I was out of wax paper). I tried to remove a few of the whoopie pie-pan sandwich sides, but a few started to crumble. I decided to let those cool completely before I tried to move them out of the pan again. 


An hour later (after going out to run a few errands and pick up the ice cream), I moved the rest of the whoopie pie-pan sandwich sides to another piece of tinfoil. I had let the ice cream sit out for 20 minutes to soften, so now it was time to make some sandwiches!

Right when I started assembling, I realized that the muffin-top sandwich sides would not work for ice cream sandwiches--see the problem noted above. I cut the muffin-top sandwich sides (the ones that were in the whoopie pie pan) in half with a serrated knife. The bottom side was a bit smaller than the top side, so I just had to be careful not to over-fill with ice cream.


I smeared about 2 1/2 spoonfuls of ice cream onto the smaller of two sandwich sides and topped it off with a larger sandwich side. After assembling each ice cream sandwich, I wrapped it with saran wrap and tied it off with a curled ribbon.

I made 11 good ice cream sandwiches. I tried to make an even dozen, but my last one fell apart. I saved all of the crumbled cake to make ice cream sundaes though; we do not waste food in this house!

I'm not sure how long the sandwiches will keep in the freezer, but I don't expect that they'll sit too long out there.


Rating:
I didn't try more than a bite of a sandwich that Justin ate, but I thought they turned out pretty good (even with me forgetting the eggs in the cake batter!). 


Justin's only criticism was that he prefers a crispy outer sandwich on his ice cream sandwiches. Next time I'll bake the cakes a bit longer.


Justin's dad had no criticism; he's a good man!


Will I try this recipe again? Definitely. I'd like to do yellow cake with strawberry ice cream.