4th of July Ice Cream Sammies

July is H O T. Which is why frozen treats are the best desserts to bring to your local patriotic party. I'm here to show you how to use some fun toys from Michael's to make yummy 4th of July ice cream sandwiches!

Note- this is not a sponsored post, but I will be sharing links to where you can get all of the tools I use.

I always get great deals at Michaels through their rewards program- if you're not a member, join and start stocking your baking tool kit!

Ice Cream Sandwich makers by Celebrate It - I found these in my local Michaels store, but can't find them on their website. I was able to find a similar tool on other sites though.

What you'll need:

Sugar cookie dough- use your favorite recipe, or check out my fave here
Rolling pin and clean surface- I use the Wilton measuring mat for all of my dough rolling, as it makes clean up so easy!
Ice cream sandwich cookie cutters, circle cookie cutter (slightly larger than your shapes- I used a cup)
Cookie sheet and parchment paper
Ice cream of your choice
Optional- Sprinkles or small candies to decorate

1) Make your favorite sugar cookie dough and plop it onto a clean space for kneading and rolling. I use this recipe for my sugar cookies and keep these things in mind:

Use powdered sugar to "flour" your rolling pin and mat- it's more appropriate for sugar cookies than boring old flour!
Keep your rolled cookie batter thick! 3/8 of an inch is a good measure for thick and soft cookies. Thin, crispy cookies will not work for these ice cream sandwiches.
The more you knead/roll, the tougher the cookie! We want light and fluffy, so keep the dough handling to only what's necessary.

2) After we bake the cookies, we'll use our star tool to cut the cookies again, so you'll need to cut out your shapes to be slightly larger than the stars (I used the rim of a cup to cut circles).

3) Refrigerate those pre-baked bad boys! When you bake cold dough, it's less likely to spread when baking, so you can also fit more cookies onto the sheet. Also, since we'll be cutting the baked cookies, it doesn't matter too much if the cookies run into each other in the oven.

You can see where I made the star impression to make sure the cookie cut outs would fit.

4) Bake for about 8 minutes at 350 F (or whatever your recipe suggests). We want these cookies to be just under baked so that they are soft and fluffy. Don't worry, when you pull them out of the oven, the heat from your pan will continue to bake them through so they're not completely doughy in the middle.

5) When cookies have cooled, use your star shaped cutter and go right for the middle- where the cookie will be the softest and most even across the top (stay away from those slanted edges). You'll layer about an inch of ice cream in the middle, and then add another layer of cookie.

I used Halo Top Birthday Cake ice cream (HBD, America), but this is where you can get creative!
You'll want to make sure your ice cream is very cold for this, since it will need to maintain it's shape once coming out of the star cutter. You can use a spoon to manually fill the ice cream layer.

6) Push your ice cream sandwich out onto a cold pan covered with parchment paper. I like to keep mine standing up so that they maintain their shape. Add any sprinkles to the ice cream now, that way it sticks to the ice cream. Continue step 5 until all of your mini sammies are prepared.

7) Freeze until ready to eat! If you need to take these somewhere, I would highly recommend putting in a flat cold area, like a shoe box in a cooler with dry ice. The last thing you want is to pull out melted stars!