How to make yummy ice cream sandwiches using gingerbread men—both scratch and cheater versions.
HOLIDAY 2012 | Forget lettuce, tomato and leftover turkey stuffed between toasted ciabatta. The sweetest, most memorable holiday sandwich—the one that screams You Need to Eat Me for Christmas—is pictured at the top of this story and is made from a layer of chilly ice cream and chewy gingerbread men.
I found this definitive dessert on beekman1802.com, the website belonging to Josh Kilmer-Percell and Brent Ridge, two enterprising guys from NYC who bought a farm in rural New York in 2006 and then parlayed their adventures there into a reality TV show and best-selling cookbook. (Also, in an unexpected upset, the couple just won the latest season of The Amazing Race.)
FULL SCRATCH—Josh and Brent made the frozen treats directly above from scratch, forgoing ice cream in favour of frozen custard. CLICK HERE for the easy-to-follow directions.
FULL CHEATER—Store bought ice cream and cookies can make gorgeous gingerbread “manwiches.” Spread out softened vanilla ice cream in a pan the way Josh and Brent did with their custard, then let it refreeze rock solid for a minimum 24 hours.
Use a cookie cutter similar in size to your cookies to cut gingerbread men out of the ice cream. Some premade ginger cookies are particularly hard; make them ice cream sandwich soft by placing them together with a fresh piece bread in a Ziploc bag over night (CLICK HERE for the science behind why this works).
HALF CHEATER, HALF SCRATCH—Why bother buying hard gingerbread cookies (and then softening them up) when super chewy ones are simple to make. I love the spicy recipe I found on Deb Perelman’s website smittenkitchen.com, which she borrowed from Martha Stewart. CLICK HERE to get Martha’s version. —Ruth Rainey
