4th of July Ice Cream Sandwiches, complete with fireworks!
apollina baker
I wanted to make something a little different this 4th of July. Not the usual strawberry, blueberry and whip cream desserts. So, here it is: Red, White and Blue Ice Cream Sandwiches with Pop Rocks! A friend of mine recently visited Israel and brought me back some chocolate. I was so surprised when my mouth started popping after I bit into it! Apparently, they put pop rocks in their chocolate bars in Israel and let me tell you, it is awesome:) So, I got to thinking, what better way to celebrate the 4th of July than with patriotic ice cream sandwiches that burst in your mouth like fireworks?!
Once I decided to make these, I got a little nervous thinking I wouldn't be able to find Pop Rocks. A simple Google search led me to my neighborhood Walgreens and I was relieved! I picked them up yesterday after work and was hoping to find some special edition Edy's red, white and blue ice cream but no such luck. I wanted to get these all done last night so I was taking some short cuts. On to Whole Foods where I picked up 3 cartons of ice cream: Blackberry (for the blue), Strawberry (for the red), and Vanilla. I wanted to do these on shortbread cookies but I didn't find any boxed mix at Whole Foods so, since I was going for a quick and dirty method, it was on to Williams-Sonoma (W-S). As an aside, in my neighborhood there is a Walgreens, Whole Foods and W-S all on the same block so that's why I hit them up, in that order. Apparently, W-S discontinued their shortbread mix so I opted for the sugar cookie mix instead. This is the first time I bought a W-S mix and they are expensive, $13 for this mix! Next time I'll go to the Giant and get those prepared dough rolls.
I took everything home, left the ice cream on the counter to thaw and prepared my pans/baking sheets with plastic wrap for my ice cream re-freeze. I followed the method in this video to form the ice cream. Once the ice cream had thawed enough (to the point where you can manually whip it vigorously with a spoon) I started the coloring process. The blackberry ice cream had a purple color so I added blue gel food coloring until it had the blue shade I wanted. Then I poured it into those plastic wrap lined pans, wrapped it up tight and stuck it in the freezer. I did the same thing with the strawberry ice cream and red gel food coloring. After all the ice cream was in the freezer, I made my sugar cookie dough because it had to sit in the fridge for at least 2 hours before baking. I used my little rectangular cookie cutters and baked the cookies according to package instructions. After they cooled, I melted my white chocolate bark (previously purchased from Harris Teeter) and dipped the long side of the cookie in it. Then, I sprinkled them with pop rocks and let them sit over night. This morning I got up super early, assembled the sandwiches and took some pics. They definitely need to harden up in the freezer after assembly, they were melting fast!
They look super fun and taste delicious. I tried a cookie last night with the pop rock coating and it was awesome, it's such a fun feeling to have these little fireworks go off in your mouth!
For an even quicker version, just buy the regular ice cream sandwiches and coat the ice cream with pop rocks. They're perfect because everyone loves ice cream sandwiches and everyone loves pop rocks:)
Happy 4th of July!