Midweek Roundup: "They're delicious"

Photo by Catherine

Phyllis Caroline blog

Although you couldn't tell it by looking at Catherine's lovely photo of these ice cream sandwiches, she says she doesn't "really get the bother of an ice cream sandwich."  More of a "thing" in the U.S., she suspects (and I suspect she's right), she doesn't see what's wrong with just serving a bowl of ice cream accompanied by biscuits (cookies).  You have a point, Catherine.  But Americans do love food they can eat out of hand (or, even better, on a stick.  And, as you say, they're delicious.  With this point of view, you can see why Catherine was more impressed with the biscuit than with the ice cream.  These are her "favourite black cocoa-y type of chocolate biscuits."  If anything, they may be a tad too sweet, but Catherine admits that may be due to the fact that she chose an ice cream labelled "Chocolate Obsession."

Rachel took a different approach to filling these sandwiches with ice cream.  Instead of just one flavor, she bought "Banana Siplit" ice cream, so she made Strawberry Pineapple, Chocolate Walnut, AND Fudge Ripple Ice Cream Sandwiches.  As Catherine also noted, the texture of these cookies may change according to the thickness of the cookie dough, as well as how much flour clings to the dough.  "The flour-coated batch, which [was] cut slightly thicker and baked a little less, produced [a] crispy-edged, chewy-center cookie....  The other batch was more like a chocolate snap, excellent in its own way, but more of a standalone than a sandwich cookie."

And that's it for this week.  I hope that some of you who didn't make these this week get a chance to try them sometime during the rest of the summer.  They really are lovely, and so nice to have on hand for an impromptu treat.

Next week:  The Gooseberry Crisp with the elusive gooseberry.  My thought is to treat the "gooseberry" part of the crisp as a suggestion, and, if you can't find the berries, make the crisp anyway.  I used blueberries, raspberries, and rhubarb, which yielded a sweet-tart flavor with a beautiful red sauce.  It'll be nice to know about this recipe if gooseberries ever come your way, but a shame not to make it just because they don't.  

Countdown:  19 more recipes to try!