Coffee Oatmeal Scotchie Ice Cream Sammies
Coffee Oatmeal Scotchie Ice Cream Sammies
Creamy coffee ice cream is sweetened with piloncillo (Mexican brown sugar) and sandwiched between chewy, salty oatmeal butterscotch cookies. These sammies are addictive, you won't be able to eat just one!
Equipment
- Ice Cream Maker
- Immersion blender or regular blender
- Round cookie cutter, 2.5" diameter
- 8" x 8" x 2" metal pan
- Kitchen Scale (Highly recommended for all your baking!)
Ingredients
Coffee Ice Cream
- 2 cups whole milk
- 1 ¼ cups heavy cream
- 3/4 cup cream cheese, full fat
- 3/4 cup piloncillo (aka panela or Mexican brown sugar)
- 1/4 cup ground coffee (use your favorite!)
- 1/4 tsp kosher salt
Oatmeal Scotchies
- 1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks)
- 1 cup dark brown sugar
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 2 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 1 tbsp molasses, unsulphured
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 1 ¼ tsp kosher salt
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
- 3 cups oatmeal
- 2 cups butterscotch chips OR chopped caramelized white chocolate*
Instructions
Make the ice cream base
- In a 2 qt saucepan, heat milk, cream, and coffee grounds just to boiling point. Immediately turn off heat, cover pan, and let sit for 30 minutes to thoroughly steep the coffee.
- While the coffee is steeping, measure out the cream cheese and set aside to come to room temperature. Grate enough piloncillo until you have 3/4's cup, tightly packed.
- Line a sieve with a cheesecloth or coffee filter and set it over a medium bowl. Pour the coffee mixture through it and press with a spatula to get every last bit of milk and cream into the bowl, leaving the coffee grounds in the sieve.
- Add the piloncillo, cream cheese, and salt, to the coffee milk/cream mixture and blend with immersion blender until the sugar is dissolved and the mixture is completely smooth. Chill in fridge for at least 4 hours.
- Line the 8”x8”x2” pan with plastic wrap, allowing extra wrap to overhang on all 4 sides. Run chilled coffee ice cream base through your ice cream maker and churn according to manufacturers directions. (Mine usually takes about 20 minutes to churn and I use a Kitchenaid ice cream attachment.) Working quickly, spoon the churned ice cream into the plastic wrap lined pan and use an offset spatula to smooth the top of the ice cream. Immediately cover with more plastic wrap and a layer of aluminum foil and store in freezer to firm up completely, at least 6 hours.
Make the cookie dough
- In a small saucepan, melt butter over medium heat. The butter will sputter and foam. Keep a close eye on it. As it begins to brown, carefully stir it with a wooden spoon to scrape all the brown bits from the bottom of the pan. When the butter is a golden brown, remove it from heat. It will continue to cook and become a darker brown. Scrape the pan a few more times to make sure the brown bits don't stick to the bottom. Let the butter cool while preparing the rest of the ingredients.
- Add the brown butter to a large bowl. (You can either mix the cookie dough by hand or use a stand mixer.) Add both sugars and beat until well mixed. Add the eggs, vanilla, molasses, cinnamon, salt, and baking soda and beat until homogenous.
- Add the flour and 1 cup of the oatmeal and mix until loosely combined. Add the remaining 2 cups of oatmeal and the butterscotch chips (or chopped caramelized white chocolate) and mix until just combined.
Rest and bake the cookie dough
- Using a spoon or a #40 ice cream scoop and a kitchen scale, scoop and weigh out 25-gram balls of cookie dough. (Weighing the dough is the easiest way to get cookies of uniform size, which is something you really want when making ice cream sandwiches.) Roll the dough into round balls and place on a lined cookie sheet. You will end up with a lot more cookies than you need to make the sandwiches. You can freeze the extra for another time or just bake up all the cookies and enjoy! Once all the cookies have been shaped, wrap the cookie sheet in plastic wrap and chill until the balls become firm, about 1 hour. Then, you can transfer the cookie balls to a gallon bag and chill overnight in the fridge. I try to let my cookie dough rest for 24 hours because it greatly improves the flavor and texture of the cookies. That said, even just a 30 minute rest in the fridge will improve the flavor, color, and texture of your cookies!
- Preheat oven to 350°F and arrange a rack in the middle position.
- In order to make cookies the right size and shape to make the sandwiches, I follow a specific method: Space out 9 dough balls out on an 18"x13" pan. Allow the dough to come to room temperature and then gently press down on each ball so that they flatten slightly. Bake 1 sheet at a time for 9 minutes. You will need to bake 2 sheets to have enough cookies for the sammies but I recommend baking 3 sheets just in case any cookies break or you want extra for snacking! The cookies may look very slightly wet in the middle but they will continue to cook for a few minutes once they come out of the oven and set up to a nice, soft center. If you want your cookies to be super round: 1 minute after the cookies come out of the oven, take a 3.5” round cookie cutter and, one at a time, set it over each warm cookie, directly onto the cookie sheet so that the cookie is completely encircled by the cutter, and gently rotate it around the cookie to reshape the edges so that the cookie is as round as possible.
Assembling the sammies!
- When the cookies are completely cool, match them up to create 9 pairs.
- Working quickly, pull your pan of coffee ice cream from the freezer, unwrap, and use the plastic wrap overhang as handles to pull the ice cream completely out of the pan—this makes it much easier to punch out your ice cream circles. Use your 2.5” cookie cutter to punch out 9 ice cream circles- 3 rows of 3. (The cutter is just the right size to punch out 9 circles from this pan with minimal ice cream left over.) Immediately transfer each ice cream circle to a cookie and sandwich with the second cookie, pressing firmly to help the cookies adhere to the ice cream. Transfer the cookie sandwiches to 13” x 9” pan, cover well with plastic wrap and aluminum foil, and return to the freezer to firm up - at least an hour. Then it’s time to enjoy!
Notes
*Caramelize the white chocolate (optional): Preheat oven to 250°F. Weigh out 12 oz of white chocolate and chop into pieces approximately the size of a quarter. (In order for the caramelization to work, you must use high quality white chocolate such as Valrhona Ivoire. White chocolate baking chips of any kind will NOT work.)
Evenly layer the chopped white chocolate in either a glass baking dish or on an aluminum baking sheet with parchment paper. Bake the chocolate in 10 minute intervals. At each interval, remove the chocolate from the oven, stir it and re-spread it evenly, then return it to the oven. After 60-70 minutes, the chocolate will be the color of peanut butter and smell buttery and toasty. Allow the chocolate to cool and re-harden—you can refrigerate to speed up the process. Chop the chocolate into bite size pieces and use in your favorite recipes - like these Oatmeal Scotchies!
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