With my love of food and Disney, it was only a matter of time before I tried my hand at mickey ear shaped food. With friends who also love Disney, that time came pretty quick when they lent me a mickey ear cookie cutter! While my favorite example is the Mickey Ice Cream Bar, that seemed a bit too advanced for my first attempt. So I tried ice cream sandwiches instead.
For the sandwich cookies, I adapted the recipe from King Arthur. They also include an ice cream recipe, but I already had vanilla ice cream so I just used that. Oddly enough, I didn’t have all the ingredients for their cookies, but I made it work. I didn’t have whole milk, so I mixed the 2% I had with some condensed milk. It seemed to work just fine.
Ingredients for the ice cream sandwich cookies:
- 149 g AP flour
- 43 g cocoa
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- 85 g unsalted butter (6 tablespoons)
- 99 g sugar
- 53 g light brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 137 g 2% milk
- 15 g condensed milk
I creamed the butter and sugar together before adding the vanilla. While that was going in the stand mixer, I whisked together the flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt. Half of the dry mix goes into the mixer with the creamed butter, followed by the milk mixture. As everything mixed, I scraped the sides and added the rest of the dry.
Spreading the batter was a bit of a challenge. I dolloped it onto a parchment lined sheet pan and spread it out as best I could.
The batter is a bit thick for spreading. It was thinner than cookie batter but thicker than brownie batter. I did not get it even, but it was good enough.
I baked the batter at 350 F for about 12 minutes, cooled it, then froze it. The batter does rise a bit during baking, so the final cookie sheet was still uneven.
In my notes, I mention needing a better system for cutting out the mickey shapes with the cookie cutter, but I am not sure what I meant by that. I can tell you that it was a bit of a challenge and the ears are not exactly structurally sound…but we got ears!
After cutting these out, I froze them so they were easier to handle and stored them in a plastic bag in the freezer. The texture of the finished cookies are more brownie than cookie, and don’t seem as delicate once they are frozen. When I was ready to build the sandwiches, I took out a few cookies and the ice cream to soften.
The top part of the baked batter is smooth and the bottom is rough, so I used the smooth side as the outside and rough to hold the ice cream. I used a #24 disher to scoop the ice cream for Mickey’s face, and a half tablespoon for each ear.
The ice cream got topped with another cookie (smooth side to the outside, rough side toward the ice cream).
I smooshed the cookies down to make them flat and even, but then the ice cream squishes out the sides. The spatula helps to smooth around the edges and preserve that Mickey Mouse shape we want.
In my initial research, I found two styles of ice cream sandwich cookies. In addition to this one, you can also roll out a dough to cut to your preferred shape. While I haven’t tried the second style, yet, I can say that this recipe matches what I think about when I want an ice cream sandwich.
We’ve got ears, say cheers!
