Ice Cream Week - Grasshopper Sandwiches

It's day two of ice cream week! Today we're enjoying ice cream sandwiches, made with the biggest, richest cookies around, filled with ice cream, which is filled with more cookies! Ice cream sandwich Inception!

Summertime is ice cream sandwich time. Who wants to be tied to a bowl and spoon? With these bad boys, you're free to leave the house, roam the world and still eat ice cream. So perfect.

These particular ice cream sandwiches might be the perfect thing to share with a friend. The cookies are enormous and putting two of them together gives you something the size of a baseball. I decided to pair Perry's Grasshopper Pie with these rich cookies. The mint flavor of the ice cream is smooth and not overpowering. There are also crushed cookie pieces and fudge swirls throughout. The combination is totally decadent.

I only made up a few sandwiches with the Grasshopper pie flavor. I'm thinking these cookies would also be amazing with the Cocoa-Nut Bliss flavor - coconut ice cream with chocolate covered almond, fudge pieces and shredded coconut. What would you sandwich between these chocolate cookies???

Disclaimer -  As a member of their Inside Scoopers team, Perry's Ice Cream supplied me with a bunch of their new Escapes flavors. All opinions are my own. I'm only so happy to support this hometown brand because I grew up eating Perry's and they make a damn delicious ice cream!

Two Years Ago: Celebration Cake
Three Years Ago: Cinnamon Roll Cupcakes
Four Years Ago: Cream of Asparagus Soup

J@H - Oreo Cookies

I'm a little behind on my Junk at Home challenge - I blame going on vacation, followed directly by a work conference. Luckily, I'm coming back with an amazing recipe! Homemade Oreos!!!

Yes, this recipe requires all of those exclamation marks.

I fed a few of these to the boyfriend and he described them as such... "they taste like Oreos, but without that stale, crumbly, crunchy part. The filling is dead on."

I can't take credit for the filling. I looked at a bunch of different recipes for Oreo fillings online and I decided to go with the one that sounded the least healthy and most unnatural. Just because these cookies are homemade, doesn't mean that they are healthy. 

At all.

There is a whole bunch of shortening in these cookies, but there is also Greek yogurt, so you know, it totally evens out. 

Seriously though, you should probably share these cookies with your friends and family. Limit yourself to one, two tops, and enjoy twisting open the cookies and eating the unnaturally white cookie filling.

One Year Ago: Quiche with Sweet Peppers and Sausage
Two Years Ago: Raspberry Macarons
Three Years Ago: Chocolate Malt Marshmallows
Four Years Ago: Maple Mousse

Buffalo Summer

It's summertime! I'm just a few hours away from boarding a plane and flying home for a visit! I tend to go home to see my parents twice a year, Christmas and summer. That way I get to see both of the Buffalo seasons, winter and July. 

Well, that's how the old joke goes. I'm more in the camp that Buffalo has four distinct, yet unequal seasons. 

Fall starts rolling in immediately after Labor day. In mid-September, the leaves start to turn and the sweaters and jeans quickly reappear. I think it's Fall that WNYers live for. I always loved Fall because it meant going back to school. But then again, I'm a nerd and totally loved school. Feel free to make fun of me.

Yes, winter is long and snowy, but you'll rarely hear a local complain about it. "What is winter without snow?", they will tell you. I remember several Christmas eves, driving through blinding snow to get to my grams house. 

Spring is rainy and cool and it tends to last from early May until mid June. It gives you plenty of time to plant your gardens and clean up from the winter mess. 

Summer pops it's head in around early July and brings sticky, hot weather. We didn't have air conditioning in my childhood home. I was only ever upset about it for one or two weeks a year. You don't get 100 degree days in Buffalo, but humidity will make you wish you had a cold drink in your hand all day. 

One easy way to tell that it was summer in my childhood home? Check the freezer for ice cream. If it was summer, there was a solid shelf of Perry's ice cream. If it wasn't summer, there was probably just half a shelf. My dad seriously loves Perry's ice cream. (Remember, I took him to the Perry's ice cream factory last year? It was his birthday present, he loved it.)

You might remember that I'm lucky enough to be a Perry's Inside Taster! This means that once or twice a year, then send me ice cream! This is super important these days, because my Wegmans in New Jersey have stopped carrying the brand! (Worse day ever) This summer, I received a large box of dry ice and three containers of Perry's. Three containers of ice cream that were all destined for something different. 

First, the French Roast Coffee. I never saw this ice cream. The package arrived and I put the containers in the fridge. I left for a conference. When I came home, the ice cream was no longer in the fridge. The boyfriend may or may not have eaten the entire container of ice cream himself. He wouldn't fess up.

Next, Otto's Cupcake. I saw this ice cream a few months back, during Sweet 16 basketball time. It's chocolate ice cream, with pieces of chocolate cake and orange frosting swirled in. Let me be clear though, the frosting swirl is orange in color, not orange in flavor. My dad and I both had some and discussed this point for a good five minutes. We were both expecting orange flavor because we didn't read the box before we ate it. This ice cream was tasty.

Finally, All Natural Dark Chocolate. This ice cream made its way into those ice cream sandwiches you see above. I was inspired by these brownie ice cream sandwiches from Smitten Kitchen. 

I knew that I still had a container of chocolate Perry's in the freezer and thought nothing would pair better with the ice cream, than peanut butter. I whipped up a batch of my favorite peanut butter bars, divided the batter in two and sandwiched almost the entire container of ice cream between the two slabs of peanut butter bar. The boyfriend thinks my ice cream to cookie ratio is off. He's just crazy, these ice cream sandwiches are amazing.  Give them a try! Or come over, I have a whole pan of them to share!

Chocolate Hearts

I wasn't planning on making anything for Valentine's Day, but I decided to try out a variation on my cutout cookie recipe this weekend.  Since we are only a few days away from February 14th, I thought why not use a heart shaped cookie cutter.