Blueberry Sour Cream Ice Cream Sandwich (TWD)

If you haven't figured out by now, I LOVE making homemade ice cream! I was thrilled to see that we had ice cream slated for this week's Tuesdays With Dorie. Selected by Dolores at Chronicles in Culinary Curiousity, this recipe for blueberry sour cream ice cream sounded like a perfect summer treat. This recipe was really simple to prepare, as all you need to do is cook & puree the berries, mix in a combination of heavy cream and sour cream, chill and churn. I love this recipe as there were no eggs to temper...yippeee! I went with fresh blueberries, as my local markets are overflowing with them. I also went ahead and added twice the amount of lemon juice (really dig the tart flavor). Once assembled and frozen, I took a little taste test (okay, twist my arm! ;) )...YUM!!! Great thick, creamy texture, beautiful purplish/bluish hue, and a nice tangy flavor that comes from the sour cream. In many ways, this tasted like a frozen blueberry cheesecake filling.With cheesecake in mind, I decide to play with the recipe and made mini ice cream sandwiches. I paired the ice cream with a ridiculously easy graham cracker based cookie (the original recipe and my adaptation notes are below). To make these sandwiches, pour the just churned icecream into a 8x8 dish (or a loaf pan---that's what I used here) and freeze to set.

Graham Cookies
makes approx 24 cookies

1 1/2 C graham cracker crumbs (I pulverized my in a food processor)
1/2 C flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 14 oz can sweetened condensed milk
1/2 C butter, softened
1 C shredded coconut
2 C chocolate chips/nuts (if omitting completely, as I did here, up the flour by 1/2 C)

- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Mix the graham cracker crumbs, flour and baking powder in a bowl to combine
- Incoporate the butter and condensed milk until combined
- Fold in the shredded coconut (and choc chips and nuts, if using)
- Drop dough by the teaspoon and bake until nice and browned - 8-10 minutes.

For the sandwich recipe, halve the recipe and spread the dough onto an 9x13" pan or 1/4 sheet pan lined with parchment (very important as the dough is extremely sticky). Bake at 350 for approx 18-22 minutes, until the top is nice and golden brown. Note: I used an 8x8 pan for the cookies shown here, and the cookies came out a bit thicker than I would have liked. If you like thicker cookies, this should fit the bill; if you like your cookies thinner, definitely go with a larger pan.

I cut the cookies and ice cream using a fluted round cookie cutter, assembled the sandwiches, and placed the finished sandwiches in the freezer to set. Keep in mind that the ice cream needs to be frozen solid when assembling the sandwiches and you need to work quickly, or you will end up with a melting mess.

These mini cheesecake ice cream sandwiches tasted fantastic (it's another story on how these little guys looked :( ). The ice cream was the highlight in this treat, and this recipe will definitely be flagged for a repeat!

For the receipe, please head over to Dolores' blog. To see what everyone else churned, check out the TWD blogroll.