DIY Oreo Ice Cream Cookies

Tomorrow, I am bringing one of my "besties" dinner.  Exactly one week ago, Jody's mom fell down an entire flight of stairs, at Jody's home, while playing with her granddaughter.  The end result was painful, both physically, emotionally, and I am sure mentally.  She broke both wrists and one ankle.  Her mother now resides in a rehabilitation center, for additional surgeries, as well as training on how to heal and live, temporarily, without critical body parts.  

I already know what I plan to make her for dinner.  After all, she's been haunting me for it ever since I made it for our family.  Do you recall the meatloaf cupcakes? Yes, that's what's for dinner, but being her husband just returned home from a two week missions trip, to Uganda, I thought it would be nice to bless him with his FAVORITE "last course"… ICE CREAM! I beefed it up a bit though.  I decided to make my own ice cream sandwiches using chocolate oreos, vanilla oreos, and m&m cookies. Take a peak…

Basically, I started out with strawberry ice cream and golden oreo ice cream by Breyers, oreo cookies (both chocolate and vanilla) and sprinkles.

1. Set ice cream on counter about 10 minutes, to thaw out.  Meanwhile, layer a jelly roll pan with parchment paper.   

2. Scoop a large quantity of ice cream onto the parchment paper.  Place another layer of parchment paper on top.  Using a rolling pin, roll out the ice cream to approximately 1.5" thickness.

Eventually, I sent Darren out to get vanilla bean and chocolate peanut butter cup ice cream too!

 Walaa!  Refreeze for 1 hour.  DO NOT CHINSE ON THIS DIRECTION!

I was too impatient and kept pulling it out, which delayed me even more.

3. Prepare your cookies to be filled with ice cream.

Pull the oreos apart carefully!  I went through a TON of oreos.  They kept breaking, but I think it's because the bag had been dropped in the store.  

4. Pull the ice cream out of the freezer. Remove the top layer of parchment paper.

5.  Begin filling in the cookies with ice cream.  This step has to go FAST.  It's incredible how quickly ice cream melts when you DON'T want it to. The way that I "cut" this ice cream was by using a biscuit cutter which matched the size of the cookie.  

6.  After filling the cookie, refreeze immediately!

7. OR roll the ice cream cookie into your favorite toppings first, then refreeze.  I chose to use colorful sprinkles (their daughter Ansley will love that) and heath bar!  I had no rhyme or reason to which ice cream I filled each cookie with or which toppings I used.  I figured I couldn't go wrong with ANY combination.

I thought the finished product turned out scrumptious looking and just gorgeous!!!

I hope they taste as good as they look.  I did NOT taste test.

 Colorful, fun, and I hope tasty!

 Photogenic cookies!  Gotta love PRETTY food.

The best part about this dessert is that the options are endless.

I have ONE last recommendation.  Elliminate steps 1, 2, and 4 completely.  I highly recommend using the solid ice cream from the freezer.  Work cookie by cookie. Scoop out about 1 tablespoon of ice cream or more, layer ice cream on top of cookies, squeeze both cookie top and cookie bottom together and immediately put into the freezer.  Then do cookie #2 and so on and so forth.  Doing step 1, 2, and 4 is very messy and you feel pressured to work fast because the ice cream melts fast. I eliminated these steps at the very end when I had more cookies than I had ice cream left.  It was so much easier and more enjoyable that way.