#16...A tradition continued?

Traditions are important to us as they help us feel connected to the past and provide memories for the future.  When Tim and I first married we made an effort to combine our families traditions as well as start some new ones.  One of those traditions was partaking of Baskin Robbins custom ice cream sandwiches over the Christmas holiday, which came from the Lyon family.  As the years progressed, finding a store who would make the custom sandwiches got harder and harder and we adapted to just having our favorite BR ice cream flavors instead.

A few years back I found an ice cream sandwich kit and purchased it.  Thoughts of rekindling the ice cream sandwich tradition danced in my head.  But the holidays got busy and I never got around to making them.  In fact I totally forgot about them until I found the kit this past week.  While I prefer the traditional chocolate cookie, I used store bought chocolate chip cookie dough as suggested in the brochure.  I let it soften and spread it in the pan as directed.  I cooked it for the suggested time.  It was one giant raw cookie.  Don't get me wrong...I LOVE my cookies soft and undercooked.  So when I say raw, it is not even close to undercooked.  Back into the oven it went and was cooked for almost double the suggested time.  It still wasn't perfect, but as an impatient person I was willing to accept imperfection.

The kit includes three different shaped sandwich makers; a star, heart and fancy square.  They come in three parts.  You pop off the bottom and use the main body to cut your cookies shapes.  Pop the bottom back on and layer a cookie in the main body, then a scoop of ice cream, then top with a cookie and use the cookie press that goes on top to squish it all together.  Pop off the bottom again and use the press to push the newly formed ice cream sandwich out.

With practice you could possibly make an ice cream sandwich to rival the photo on the box.  Mine looked NOTHING like that.  My corners weren't crisp and the ice cream was melting over the bottom.  I probably should have cooked the cookies a bit longer, but you want a soft cookie in your sandwich so it is a fine line there.  I also should have used rock hard ice cream although not sure how easy that would be to press.  It looked a mess, but tasted pretty good.

Will I make these again?  I doubt it.  But I did learn a valuable lesson.  If I want to carry on the tradition I will just go to BR and buy their damn cookies and make my own custom sandwiches.