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This ice cream sandwich recipe is like a holiday cookie project disguised as dessert! It’s fun, festive, and just chaotic enough to keep the kids entertained (and covered in cocoa dust). Whip up these tasty Christmas treats together, and you’ll end up with something deliciously unique—just don’t be surprised if more ice cream goes in mouths than on sandwiches!

By the way, it’s also a great dessert to serve adults! We’ve been having some of the warmest Fall days on record. So Hubs has been enjoying eating these outside amongst the fallen leaves.! I can’t believe this was November in Canada!

12 Days of Cookies

Welcome to 12 Days of Cookies, hosted by Janet at Try It Like It Create It! From December 1-12, a new cookie recipe will be shared daily, offering a delicious lineup of treats to inspire your holiday baking.

Since recipes will be only be live during their specific day of the 12 days, check back in often! You’ll find the Christmas cookie recipes from us and 11 of our friends at the very end of this post.

Watch the video

Watch the video to see how easy and fun these are to make!

In the video, we’re collaborating with two of our friends: Rachel from Tea and Forget Me Nots and Carol from the Style Makers Network.

This recipe is adapted from a recipe by Chapman’s ice cream. We made it sugar free (using Swerve), changed the amount of sugar and type of cocoa and, of course, gave it some personality with this Rudolf cookie cutter we found at the Habitat for Humanity Re Store.

We’re also using certified Gluten Free Oat Flour (Only Oats) because Hubs is celiac, so they are perfect to serve guest whether they have dietary restrictions or not.

The cookie isn’t as soft as your typical commercially available ice cream sandwich; that’s because you need a dough stiff enough to be able to cut it with a cookie cutter.

Ice Cream Sandwich Recipe Tips

There are several things we think are essential to the best ice cream sandwich recipe. First is the cocoa. We tried the cookie dough with natural cocoa and found them to be too bitter. So we switched to a dutch processed cocoa powder. It tends to be less bitter. You can read about the difference between natural and dutch processed here.

The other tip we have for you is to use powdered sugar instead of a granular one. Regular sugar tends to be gritty because the cookies only bake for 6 minutes. Personally, we avoid processed sugar as much as we can. However, we do use a sugar substitute called Swerve for baking, which also comes in the form of icing sugar.

Feel free to use real sugar if you prefer, but use icing sugar for best results.

Lastly the ice cream!  There’s really only one gluten free ice cream on the market here in Canada that we can even eat. But we would still buy Chapman’s boxed ice cream even if we weren’t gluten-free!

We cut slices to use as a filling between the two cookies – perfect for cutting with a cookie cutter! So a box of ice cream is ideal for that. Of course, you can buy any ice cream and scoop and fill instead if you wish.

Feel free to switch up the flavour of the ice cream too, instead of the traditional vanilla typically used in ice cream sandwiches. We used to be able to find candy cane ice cream at Christmas time. But sadly it’s not available in Chapman’s gluten free lineup this year. Cue the sad emoji! However, by using peppermint flavouring in the chocolate cookie instead of vanilla, I think we’ll make due :).

Materials

[If you’re looking for some of the things we used, we’ve got you covered (disclosure): The blue links in this post may be affiliate links. We earn a commission from qualifying purchases which we proudly donate to Alzheimer’s research. But don’t worry, you don’t pay a cent more! Thanks for helping to support our fundraiser!]

• Doughmakers 14” x 20.5” Cookie Sheet
• Glass mixing bowl with non slip bottom (ours is Pyrex) or batter bowl
• Reindeer cookie cutter (the exact one we’re using is made by Ganz, but this one is very close in size)
• Unbleached parchment paper
• Silpat Silicone Baking Mat
• Rolling pin

Decor

• Candy eyeballs
• Maraschino cherries
• Red sparkle icing gel (this holds the cherry on. But if you don’t want to use cherries, you could just use this sparkle gel)
• White sparkle icing gel (to hold eyes)

Ice Cream Sandwich Recipe

Get the kids to help you measure all the ingredients so they’re ready to go.

IMPORTANT – since substituting Dutch Processed Cocoa for the natural cocoa we used originally, we learned that sometimes you have to also swap the baking soda for baking powder. According to this article, you might want to also swap the 1/2 tsp of baking soda in our recipe to 1 tsp of baking power instead. We haven’t tried this swap and thought the cookies turned out fine, but we’ll leave that up to you.

Then you can take over with creaming the butter and sugar together with the hand mixer.

For this Christmas ice cream sandwich, we’re adding peppermint flavouring instead of vanilla, but use whatever extract you prefer. If you use vanilla, be sure to double the quantity in the ice cream sandwich recipe below.

Depending on how lumpy your cocoa is, you might want to sift it into the oat flour, baking powder and salt before combining together.

Once you mix the dry ingredients into the wet, it may still look clumpy and you’ll think you’ve made a mistake.

But don’t worry! Grab a wooden spoon to make sure it’s mixed well.

Once you roll it into balls it will come together to a smooth consistency.

Roll each ball between two pieces of parchment. Then cut out your reindeer shape with the cookie cutter. If you prefer, you can roll this out into a larger rectangle, cut the shapes, then re-roll the scraps. However, I like to do these individually.

Transfer your reindeer onto a cookie sheet lined with a silicone mat (we use Silpat).

You should get at least 12 cookies (plus a leftover to snack on if you roll like me)! But if will all depend on how thick or thin you roll these.

By the way, never cut directly on a Silpat or silicone sheet with a cookie cutter or knife. You could cut through to the fibreglass and you don’t want that in your food!

If you like, you can use a skewer to poke in some eyes into half of these. For some reason,  holes are traditional in an ice cream sandwich. But making holes for eyes in the cookie dough isn’t necessary if you decorate these as I show you further ahead!

Pop them into a 350 degree oven and bake for 6 minutes. They will puff up slightly.

In the meantime, you can cut some maraschino cherries in half and dry them with a paper towel for later.

Let the cookies cool. Then pop them into the freezer for at least 1/2 an hour.

Decorate the Ice Cream Sandwiches

It’s time to decorate. Grab some candy eyeballs and stick them on using white icing gel. You can make your own icing to glue the elements down, but these squeeze tubes just make decorating so fast and easy!

Then stick on the maraschino cherry with the red gel for the nose.

Set those aside and prepare the bottom of your ice cream sandwiches. Slice the ice cream and cut it out with the reindeer cookie cutter. Place the ice cream onto the bottom cookie.

Now, sandwich the decorated reindeer on top of the ice cream layer. So fun!

Cookie reindeer decorations

Best Ice Cream Sandwich Dessert

Serve these ice cream sandwiches immediately. Or prepare them all ahead and then freeze until ready to serve. You can wrap your reindeer ice cream sandwiches in plastic wrap or parchment and place them back in the freezer. They’ll keep for up to 3 months. But we guarantee they won’t last that long!

Aren’t these just the best Christmas ice cream sandwiches? I’m sure these are all the rage at the North Pole and will likely be all the rage in our household too when we serve these fun treats over the holidays!

Christmas Ice Cream Sandwiches

It may seem counterintuitive, but ever the chocoholic, I’ll be enjoying this easy ice cream sandwich recipe with a hot cuppa cocoa – sporting our crochet mug cozy (grab our free crochet pattern if you’d like to make one too).

Best ice cream sandwich dessert

If you want to ‘behave’ yourself before the holidays so you can eat more of these over Christmas, check out our green goddess dressing recipe!

Or throw caution to the wind with our hot cocoa bar sign. It will inspire you to go all out and decorate a hot cocoa station!

If reindeer are your theme this year, you won’t want to miss this adorable reindeer wreath to decorate for Christmas!

And if you don’t want to bake, you can still make an impressive dessert with our Christmas bark recipe.

Pin Ice Cream Sandwich Recipe

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12 Days of Cookies

Go check out what our friends are baking for the hollidays! Don’t forget that some of these will only be live on their respective day in December, so check back often!

Happy baking!

Print Pin

Ingredients

• 1/3 cup cocoa
• 1 1/2 cups oat flour we use gluten free oat flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda or swap for 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter room temperature
• 1 cup icing sugar Swerve
• 1 egg
• 1/2 tsp peppermint flavour or 1 tsp vanilla extract
• Vanilla ice cream we use Chapman’s in a box
• 6 maraschino cherries cut in half
• Icing gel I used red and white, but you can get away with just the white
• Candy eyes

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
• Depending on how lumpy your cocoa is, sift it first. Mix cocoa, oat flour, baking powder, salt. Set aside.
• With electric beater, cream together the butter and icing sugar for a few minutes. Add the egg and flavouring (peppermint or vanilla). Mix the dry ingredients into the wet and combine on low until incorporated.
• Mixture will seam crumbly, but will come together as you roll it into balls. Scoop out some dough, bring together into a ball and roll out to 1/8” thick between two pieces of parchment paper (or roll all dough into one sheet). Cut out with reindeer cookie cutter and put onto Silpat lined baking sheet a few inches apart. Re-roll all the scraps. You should end up with at least 12 cookies spread over two baking sheets (6 on each).
• Bake for 6 minutes. Cool for 15 minutes. Put cookie sheets into freezer when pan is cool for at least a 1/2 hour.
• Bring cookies out of freezer and carefully remove from Silpat. If using a box ice cream, slice about 1/2” thick. Cut out with cookie cutter. Save scraps. Sandwich ice cream between two cookies. If preferred, you can scoop the ice cream instead.
• You can prepare these in advance, wrap them in plastic wrap and freeze until ready to serve. Will keep up to 3 months in the freezer.

Notes

IMPORTANT - since substituting Dutch Processed Cocoa for the natural cocoa we used originally, we learned that sometimes you have to also swap the baking soda for baking powder. According to this article, you might want to also swap 1/2 tsp of baking soda, and use 1 tsp of baking power instead.  We haven't tried this and thought the cookies turned out fine with baking soda, but we'll leave that up to you. 

Keep in mind, as with all substitutions, that the outcome really depends on the recipe. But the above is a good starting point for substituting one cocoa powder for the other in general!