Chocolate Peanut Butter Ice Cream Sandwiches

Chocolate Peanut Butter Ice Cream Sandwiches

Chocolate and peanut butter are meant to be together. I found two different recipes that are great on their own, but really balance each other out together. It might be too much to cook them all on the same day, but if you spread the cooking process across multiple days, it becomes a lot more feasible. I did the the following:

Day 1-Cooked the chocolate crumbs

Day 2-Made the cookie dough

Day 3-Made the ice cream base

Day 4-Churned the ice cream

Day 5-Baked the cookies

Day 6-Delivered and enjoyed

Day 1 Cooked the Chocolate Crumbs

I followed the chocolate-chocolate cookie recipe from the Momofuku Milkbar Cookbook. I cannot give you the exact recipe out of respect for Christina Tosi, but she posted another of her cookie recipes that gives you a rough idea and I'll show you the process. I even included some videos. Scroll down to the compost cookie recipe.

I cooked the chocolate crumbs for a banana cream pie and just doubled the recipe to yield enough for the cookies.

The chocolate crumbs are the easiest to make. 

1. Preheat the oven

1. Combine all purpose flour, salt, sugar, good cocoa powder (Dutch Process for the win), and cornstarch in a stand mixer. Stir on low. 

2. Add melted unsalted butter while the mixer is still on until crumbles form. 

3. Put the crumbles on a Silpat or parchment paper line baking sheet. Make sure the crumbles are well distributed so that hot air can circulate.

4. Bake for at least 20 minutes. When the crumbles are only a little bit moist, they are done baking. They'll dry out as they cool off.

 Day 2-Made the Cookie Dough

1. Prepare the ingredients this includes:

• Putting room temperature unsalted butter, sugar, and glucose in the stand mixer bowl. Do not make this recipe without the glucose. Glucose is sugar brought up to a very high temperature and then cooled forming the stickiest substance imaginable. The glucose will make the cookies teeth satisfyingly chewy. 
• Melted chocolate
• Egg and vanilla
• Flour, cocoa powder (Dutch processed of course), baking powder, and baking soda, and salt whisked in a bowl
• The chocolate crumbs from day one

 

2. Mix the contents of the stand mixer until the butter is creamed.

3. Add in the egg, vanilla, and melted chocolate

4. Add in the dry ingredients gradually, but not too slow. You want to minimize the amount of time that your mixer is on once the dry ingredients are in.

 5. Add in the chocolate crumbs with the mixer on the lowest setting.

6. Shape the cookie dough with a small ice cream scoop onto a lined cookie sheet. Cover with plastic wrap and aluminum foil. Freeze or refrigerate for at least an hour. If you freeze them, you can can consolidate them into a ziploc bag to save room. Do not bake these cookies while they are warm!!

Day 3-Made the Ice Cream Base

The peanut butter ice cream recipe is available here: http://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/Peanut-Butter-Swirl-Ice-Cream- Please note that I doubled the recipe since, well... my coworkers are hungry.

1. Get your ingredients ready, this includes:

• 1 cup of milk (I use whatever type I have, the cream's fat content will trump the milk) in a large sauce pan
• 3 egg yolks and 0.75 of a cup of white sugar in a large bowl
• 1 cup of smooth peanut butter in two half cup portions
• 1.5 cups of cream 
• 2 teaspoons of vanilla
• 0.5 of a cup of salted roasted peanuts chopped

2. Heat the milk until it is steaming, stir with a spoon scrapping the bottom just in case the milk cooks on the bottom.

 3. Stir the egg yolks and sugar together with a whisk. At first the mixture will be yellow and grainy. After you whisk for a while, the mixture will soften both in texture and color.

4. Slowly stir in the hot milk to temper the eggs, bringing their temperature up gradually preventing them from scrambling. Who wants scrambled eggs in their ice cream?

5. Fully combine the milk and egg mixture until it is all incorporated. Put the mixture back into the saucepan and cook on medium, constantly stirring with a wooden spoon. Cook until the mixture thickens and can coat the back of the spoon.

6. Stir in half a cup of peanut butter until combined.

7. Pour the mixture through a fine sieve to get out any egg bits that did scramble.

8. Incorporate in the vanilla and cream.

8. If you are using the type of ice cream maker that requires you to freeze the bowl, you'll have to let the ice cream base cool in the fridge for a couple of hours. If you have one with a built-in compressor, you can churn right away. Even though I have the latter, I wanted to space out the cooking process and opted to cover the base with plastic wrap in the refrigerator overnight.

Day 4-Churned the Ice Cream

1. Follow the ice cream maker's instructions on how to churn ice cream.

2. Just before the ice cream is done churnning, add in the chopped peanuts.

3. After the ice cream is churned, fold in the rest of the peanut butter.

3. Wrap the top of the ice cream container with plastic wrap to ensure freshness.

Day 5-Baked the Cookies

1.  Bake the cookies directly from frozen. Be sure not to over bake which is difficult when the cookies are so dark. My rule of thumb is if the very edges are starting to firm up, but the middle is still soft, take the cookies out and let them cool. They will firm up when they cool on a cooling rack.

Day 6-Delivered and Enjoyed

Enough said, these will go fast.