Vanilla Ice Cream Sandwiches Baby

Chipwich, Captain Cookie & The Milkman

It’s hot and sticky here in the DMV.

When the heat index rises to such levels, few dishes satisfy like a chipwich (ice cream sandwich) from Captain Cookie and The Milkman. Unable to rendezvous with their food truck or venture to their brick-and-mortar location in Foggy Bottom, we had to come up with our best imitation. We both agreed the vanilla was our go-to ice cream flavor, but when we couldn’t decide between a chocolate chip or peanut butter cookie so we figured, porque no los dos?

The result was a rich and smooth peanut butter chocolate chunk cookie. It also had enough structure and chew to hold the bulging scoop of fresh, creamy vanilla ice cream we threw down. The key to a great chipwich, especially how Captain Cookie does it, is the texture of the cookie. In order to keep the sandwich a relatively non-messy affair, we experimented with how to add in extra fat to keep the cookie soft after baking. We needed the cookie to bend but not break or crumble, and with that in mind we developed the recipe below.

Soft and Chewy Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies

2 Cups plus 2 tablespoons flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
12 tablespoons butter, melted
1 cup packed dark brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
4 tablespoons peanut butter
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
6 ounces chocolate chunks

(Egg not pictured!)

Preheat oven to 325 Fahrenheit. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.
In a mixing bowl, combine flour, baking soda, and salt. Let that just hang out for a while.
In either a standing mixer or with a hand mixer, combine the sugars and melted butter until smooth (this takes about 2 minutes). Add egg, peanut butter, and vanilla extract and beat until smooth.
Go get your bowl of dry ingredients in step 2 and slowly add to the butter/sugar/peanut butter/egg/vanilla mixture. And seriously, do it slowly. Nothing worse that turning on a mixer and having flour and salt and baking soda fly all over your counter.
With a spoon, mix in the chocolate chunks until their evenly incorporated. You may notice the dough is a little bit crumbly, but that’s okay. It should still be sticky from the peanut butter.
Take a heaping spoonful of dough and form it into a small ball. Place on parchment paper and gently press down so it forms a smushed-circle shape. Fill out the rest of the cookie sheet, and then place in the oven for 13-17 minutes, rotate the sheet mid-way.
Don’t eat yet! Let them cool while you make ice cream.

Creamy Vanilla Ice Cream

1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1 1/2 cups whole milk
4 egg yolks
3/4 cup sugar (separated into 1/2 cup and 1/4 cup)
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon

In a saucepan, combine heavy cream, milk, vanilla, and 1/2 cup of sugar. Heat until steaming but not yet simmering for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Go ahead and add a dash of salt and cinnamon as well.
In another bowl, whisk together the 4 egg yolks with the remaining 1/4 cup of sugar. To temper the eggs and avoid making frozen scrambled eggs, stir in 1/2 cup of the hot milk mixture and stir into the whisked eggs. Do that again. And again. Now you should added 1 1/2 cups of hot milk/cream/vanilla/sugar to the egg.
Add the egg/milk/cream/etc. mixture to the rest of the milk and cream mixture which is still on the stove. Heat this until it’s around 180 degrees, stirring frequently (again, we don’t want scrambled eggs!) The mixture should thicken slightly. Pour this into an ice bath to allow it to cool (bottom bowl filled with ice water, top bowl is now filled with the ice cream base)
Let this cool to room to room temperature and then place in refrigerator (pro tip: we totally put this in the freezer after ten minutes because we were really craving ice cream). After it’s cooled, place in an ice cream maker and let it do it’s thing for about 30 minutes.
When the mixture is nice and creamy, remove from maker and place in freezer until it reaches desired hardness, around 4-6 hours, until you’re reading for chipwich construction.