Root Beer Cookies

I love ice cream sandwiches. They are just so deliciously tasty and fun to eat, not to mention being a great tie back to when I was younger and only had them on very rare occasions. I remember making ice cream sandwich cookies at work one day and I had the idea that a root beer float ice cream sandwich would be delicious, if I could only find a recipe for root beer cookies.

So, I looked around the internet and found a couple recipes, but none of them had everything I wanted. One thing they all had in common was root beer concentrate, so that was a definite must, but the rest of the recipe seemed to be up for debate. So I figured, I make cookies for a living, what's one more cookie?

The butter was an obvious choice, and I thought brown sugar would complement the earthiness of the root beer concentrate. To round out the flavor I added vanilla extract. Also on my list of ingredients was cream of tartar to get some of the acidity of root beer. I made a batch and found they still lacked the bite of root beer, so I upped the acidity with a little bit of citric acid. Finally I got some cookies that I felt were worthy of being given the name of root beer.

These cookies are perfect for making ice cream sandwiches. They have a deep root beer flavor that is not overpowering, and pairs perfectly with vanilla ice cream. For tips on making ice cream sandwiches read this post.

3 Secrets of Perfect Ice Cream Sandwiches

I love cookies and ice cream. The combination of sweet, sugary cookie and the rich, mellow ice cream is one that is hard to beat. Maybe I am weird, but I think the ideal sandwich is similar to a FatBoy—soft and tender cookie and firm ice cream. I could eat these ice cream sandwiches by the dozen. Actually, I need to make sure I don't eat one because I have that hard of a time stopping.

But all too often when I am offered a homemade ice cream sandwich I end up being disappointed because the cookies are so hard I can't bite through them without inevitably squeezing all the ice cream out from between the cookies and onto my shirt or—even worse—the floor. My own experiments were not any more successful though, and I had to settle for eating my cookies and ice cream in the form of crushed cookies mixed into ice cream. Not that this is bad, but crushed cookies do not a sandwich make.

There has to be a solution, I would say to myself. After all, ice cream and cookie combinations are found everywhere in the frozen dessert section of the grocery store, in the form of cookies & creme ice cream and, of course, ice cream sandwiches. But it wasn't until I got a project at work to make cookies intended for ice cream sandwiches that I learned the secret to perfect ice cream sandwiches.

And before you run away screaming and waving your arms shouting about chemicals and artificiality, let me tell you the secret isn't as complex or scary as you think, and it's something you can do in your own kitchen and freezer. And now let me share with you the secrets I learned as a professional baker about how to make perfect ice cream sandwiches.