First recipe in a long while people! I been wanting to share this for a while and what better time then now!
We learned this recipe in a cooking class I’m taking in high school right now. These cookies are nice and soft (depending how long you bake them), and the best part is, most of the ingredients in this recipe are everyday ingredients most of us have sitting around in the cupboard.
And no that’s now how the cookies turned out after I made them, they were supposed to be like that but I got a bit messy but the cookie sandwiches were delicious! This recipe is best made for those little ones at home, they sure do love ice cream and chocolate!
Without further a do, the perfect recipe for chocolate ice cream sandwiches.
Ingredients:
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
6 Tablespoons coco powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup light brown sugar
1 stick unsalted butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
Recipe requires a stand mixer or hand mixer,
Yields 10 cookies (5 sandwiches)
In a mixing bowl, add flour, sugar, and salt and using a whisk, mix together all ingredients and set aside bowl
2. In mixer bowl, add butter and both sugars and cream the ingredients using the Paddle attachment
Note: Cream the butter and sugars until light and fluffy or well incorporated as shown below
3. Once well creamed, add the large egg into the mixture and beat on medium speed for a minute or two until the mixtures turns yellow and has a nice cakey appearance as so. Once cakey, add teaspoon of vanilla and beat (mix)
4. At this point, turn mixer on low speed of about 2 and while the mixture is being mixed, add some of the coco flour mixture into the bowl. Keep on low speed or else flour will go flying everywhere! Keep adding the flour mixture little at a time until everything is well incorporated. Don’t add all the flour mixture at a time or else the batter will dry out!
5. Once your cookie dough looks nice and chocolaty as shown above, wrap the dough up in plastic wrap and leave in the refrigerator overnight. Remember to set it out of the fridge 1 hour before using the dough the next day.
6. Take dough out of the fridge the following day and line a cookie tray with parchment or wax paper, and preheat oven to 350 degrees.
7. Unwrap chilled dough and using a pooper scooper ( as I like to call it) grab medium sized dough balls and line the even sized dough balls on the tray. You should be able to get 10 balls, that’s how much I was able to get. Leave room between each dough ball, these cookies spread!
8. Place cookie tray into oven for 12 minutes until cookies are cracked on top and soft if not too hard.
9. Let cookies sit for 7 minutes to cool and using the pooper scooper from step 7, grab a nice ball of vanilla ice cream and place on top of one of the cookies and press down a second cookie on top to form a sandwich. This step is a bit messy but here’s how mines turned out!
Summary;
These cookies are delicious and fulfill the desires of chocolate lovers and ice cream lovers! These ice cream sandwiches are especially a big hit for children best being made for a kiddie party or a little one at home. Also, this recipe is the perfect treat on a hot summers day!
I thought these cookies were delicious! The chocolate dough balances just right with a good amount of chocolate and the nice scoop of vanilla in between helped get rid of a too much chocolate flavor. Though, the cookies do get a bit hard if cooked for more than 12 minutes, they are best left being soft but not too soft or else they will fall apart.
I really hope everybody enjoys this recipe and hopefully understood every step along the way, I like adding tons of pictures each recipe for better understanding and visuals 🙂
Thanks for viewing, my next recipe post will be next week where I will be teaching how to make classic Raspberry fools. Later this week I will also be making a post reviewing kitchen aids customer service and the new 6 qt bowl they gave me for free!
Liked this post? Check out some of these other awesome recipe and culinary based posts!
It’s been about a month since I’ve been back from vacation and I have been getting that feeling to run into the kitchen and get cooking! And that’s exactly what happened.
If you didn’t get to read about my time in the Middle East make sure to go to the personnel experiences section and read about it.
Anyways, within the first two week of coming back, I decided how can I I cooking if I don’t have any new equipment? And so I bought a ton of new stuff to further help me in my baking: A new steel rolling pin, a whole set of cookie cutters, New lemon juicer, and a nice Wok pan that comes with a spatula.
With a set of new and fresh equipment, it was time to get back into shape.
My club in school, (Middle Eastern club), were set out to go to the Night ministry in Chicago to give food to the homeless. Some people volunteered to bring pasta whiles others brought falafel. I knew this was the perfect opportunity, this was y moment to give my parents an excuse as to why I should get to cook.
So, I made a large batch of 60 sugar cookies, each shaped as either a house, mickey mouse, snowflake, star heart or Christmas tree.
The recipe is very simple its just
3 sticks softened unsalted butter
2 1/2 cups granulated sugar
4 eggs
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
5 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
Throw in sugar and butter into the bowl first and cream and next add each egg at a time. Once mixed add the rest of ingredients, chill and roll out next day.
To view the full recipe with pictures of each step demonstrated along with tips and a nice frosting recipe, the full amazing recipe can be viewed at my older post, https://bakedtothebone.wordpress.com/2015/10/31/pumpkin-decorated-sugar-cookies/
Following this I made some homemade frosting by beating powdered sugar, milk, butter and vanilla extract on high speed in my kitchen aid, check it out!
Full frosting walk through can also be viewed at the link above with the sugar cookie recipe.
Eventually my cookies ended up like this.
To this day I am still cooking! These cookies were made two weeks ago so….
I am taking cooking classes that my high school is offering as an elective and we have made tons of recipes that I will be sure to give out by the end of February.
On the other note, I won’t be able to write anymore sur la table class posts anytime soon because Chef Amber Lancaster (my favorite teacher) no longer works there. So I won’t be taking a class till march or even August! It’s sad because my cooking class posts usually get so many views from you guys.
I want to keep this short and just wanted to let you guys know how things are going and to apologize for not releasing an actual cooking post in a long time. My other posts on my trip did not receive much views and weren’t the best so from now on only Cooking!
Make sure to comment on any of my post, be the first to comment and I will make sure to include you in my next posts. I have had over 400 views and many posts but still no comments 🙂
Lastly, I will be posting an official recipe post this Sunday or Monday. I will be giving out the recipe for Chocolate ice cream sandwiches. I will include many pictures with each step as usual and maybe a video to show how to make it. They are delicious!
Till then, thanks for viewing and make sure to check out some of my other amazing recipe posts in the recipe category or better yet check out my reviews and opinions category, tons of cool posts!
Anyways continuing the story from where I left off, in Dubai international airport, instead of taking Turkish airlines (which wasn’t the best) we took PIA (Pakistan international airline) straight to Karachi. It’s a one and a half hour flight from Dubai, UAE to Karachi, Pakistan.
PIA airlines:
Well to start by now most of you could guess, we went on economy class, here’s how PIA’s economy class looks, the second picture is how each individual seat looks.
As most of you can see, for an economy class PIA seats were nice and large and unlike Turkish airlines’s crowded tight leg space, PIA’s leg space was pretty decent and I was glad my knees didn’t bump into the seats in front of us.
Besides PIA’s nice and comfortable seats, the service was very nice and the air hostesses were very friendly and one especially was standing by me and my sisters seat was talking to us up until we took off!
Even with such a short flight everybody was served dinner which actually was very delicious; Biryani (chicken rice) along with a slice of cake and afterwards everybody was served chi which is Pakistani black tea. In case you haven’t already checked out my recipe on how to make this traditional delicious pass time drink , follow the link: https://bakedtothebone.wordpress.com/2015/12/06/home-brewed-chi-tea/
I just didn’t like that the bathrooms were very very dirty and looked as though someone had carved on the toilet seat; there was stuff on it a tissue couldn’t clean. I also did not like that there was no TV at all on the flight. Usually on international flights, airplanes have little TV’s behind every for entertainment but PIA lacked that. Luckily it was a short flight, besides why need a tv when we had comfortable seats and dinner going around?
PIA was awesome!
Back on topic:
We stayed at Pakistan for three weeks. One of the most interesting three weeks of my life. Unlike on my post on Dubai in which I described what attraction we went to each day, I will not be doing that here since that was a 5 day stay and this was 21 days. Also, Pakistan didn’t have much tourist attractions. I’ll just go into general descriptions with you all.
Just to let you know, one U.S. dollar was equal to 104 Pakistani rupees. So… we were pretty much wealthy there! Well for the most part, something in America that is 3 dollars would be like 300 dollars in Pakistan but most times we were able to get a large bag of chips just for 20 rupees! It was basically 20 cents for us!
Compared to let’s just say U.S.A, UAE, Germany, etc, Pakistan wasn’t much of a developed country; it’s considered a third world country. The only city in Pakistan that was actually modern or advanced or at least normal was Islamabad, which is Pakistan’s capital by the way. City’s such as Karachi (where we stayed), Lahore, Hyderabad, Peshawar, etc.
We stayed in Karachi at our cousin’s house by the way. Everytime I would wake up and freshen up I would go outside to see our beautiful neighborhood, but this was what I saw instead, be whole the streets of Karachi.
So much for beauty. A given street in Pakistan consisted of dirt everywhere on the ground, street vendors at every block, and a rickshaw occasionally driving around.
In case some of you didn’t know, in Pakistan taxi’s don’t exist, there are rickshaw’s everywhere instead to serve as transportation. A rickshaw was a three wheeled car used as taxi’s in primarily Asia; especially in India and Pakistan. Here’s how one looks.
When it came to sanitation, I could accurately say that Pakistan is one of the most least sanitary countries in the world. My own Chochee (Urdu word for aunt) would take any empty box or bag in the house or used tissues and throw them out of the window! If the garbage was too full or far away everyone would throw there trash outside there window causing outside to look like a trash bin.
I use to go to my neighbors house all day to escape the drama’s of my family and when I use to get done blowing my nose with a tissue they told me one thing. “صرف کھڑکی اسے باہر پھینک” (Just throw it out the window). It explained why everything outside was so dirty.
Also, there is so much drama that goes on there! Family members are always stabbing each others back and there was no such thing as a secret because if you told your cousin a secret he would go tell your aunt who would go tell your you dads side of the family and soon the whole khandon knew. By the way, Khandon is a Urdu and Memon word for entire family including everyone on your dads side, moms side, grandparents side and so on.
Pakistan was also full of street vendors in every block!
And surprisingly every meal or food you buy off of street vendors taste 50 times better than any meal here in the U.S.A.
A street vendor
One major problem of going staying in Pakistan was for our entire three week stay, we got the rugs. Otherwise known as diarrhea. This was because of the food and water there.
The thing about America is that it gets us used to eating processed and chemically infused food so our stomachs are adjusted to that. In Pakistan everything is natural and ate soon after being picked out of the ground without having pesticide or other stuff injected into it.
Currently the country faces a lack of freshwater so unlike in the U.S. where you can just drink water straight from the sink, in Pakistan water from the sink was not clean an dirt particles would come into tact if drank. That’s why everybody in Pakistan got there water from filling large pans with water from the sink to which they would later leave the large pan of sink water over a stove on high heat or under a fire. This Pan would be kept under heat for about 30 minutes into boiling. Once done being boiled, people would convert the water from the pan into a bottle which they would keep in the fridge to thaw out.
Within the next couple of hours, everybody drank that water. Although this technique was used everywhere in Pakistan, my family and I (except our cousins who’s house we stayed in) would not dare to drink that water. So we had to purchase bottle of Nestle and Aquafina water bottle because if we dared to drink the boiled water solution, we would all be running to the bathroom.
Especially things got worse after we all accidentally drank a cup of regular Pakistani water at a guests house. The next we were all in bed if not running to the bathroom.
Although I was very very excited to come back home from Pakistan, because I didn’t like the trip at all, there were some things I liked about it.
Most people in Pakistan had tons of money to spend in a given day and weren’t too limited because unlike in America where we pay mortgage and tons of taxes, in Pakistan once you buy a house or land, you don’t have to pay mortgage or gas bill every month, you just pay water and electricity.
There was so much freedom. Kids in Pakistan were able to run outside there neighbor hoods everyday without a care and nothing would happen. You could even yell out things in public no matter how wild but no one would stop you. Also, there were kids there at age 9 that were driving motorcycles!
The food tasted so much better and fresh. An average banana for example in Pakistan is very miniature and no bigger than the average hand compared to here where banana’s and fruits are enlarged by fertilizers and other toxins.
Although my family really misses Pakistan and wants to go back, to be honest I didn’t like it that much. The life style was dirty and there was no sense of privacy. The people there by the way would get so excited when they heard my siblings and I spoke in English, they looked at us as though we were saints. Of course that also meant we had to help every kid we met on there homework since Pakistani schools were beginning to teach English so we got to help in a lot of the work.
Although Pakistan faced poverty and many environmental problems, I really liked that these problems didn’t let the people there stop from always having fun and being lively.
Oh ya, I forgot to mention but my sister and I got to have a pet goat and sheep check it out.
Yup they were pretty adorable but by the end of our three weeks we decided to donate our sheep and goat to the house maid who surely deserved them for her hard work. A house maid in Pakistani was referred to as a “Massi” in Urdu (ma-see). Everybody had one. You could be one of the poorest people in the neighborhood but you would still have a Massi who came into your house every morning to clean everything up.
Also, Pakistan kept things very classic. Laundry was done by hand and every flat and house had windows with clothing lines hanging outside; everybody dried there clothes out by hanging them up with clips outside. I did like that Pakistan kept things simple but sometimes a drying machine could get the work done faster.
Let’s not even get started on buying clothing from shops! Clothing shops were usually very very crowded with women each with tons of money to spend. The thing that really made me feel bad for the cloth seller was that he could never be able to sell his exotic clothes at a normal price.
Ladies in any shop throughout Pakistan would take hours in one shop before buying any dress or gown because they would bargain! the definition of buying clothing shop in Pakistan is bargain! Here’s a dialogue in a given shop in Pakistan (translated into english)
Lady (Bargainer)– How much is this nice looking suit
Salesman– 2000 rupees mam
Lady: It’s not even that nice looking, I’ll at least give you 100
Salesman: 100! are you out of your mind this cloth is from Thailand and America and made from finest quality, I’ll give you a deal of 1700 Rupees
Lady: شرم کرو (shame on you) I have children at home, I can’t spend that money, 300 rupees!
3 hours later
Salesman: Fine you win have it for 900!
Lady: Shukriyah Saab (Bless you sir)
The everyday life of a salesman in Pakistan
Last and final part, Everybody in Pakistan had a motorcycle! if you go out on a road in Pakistan, you’ll see that out of 30 vehicles, 17 are motorbikes, 8 are Rickshaws, 2 are buses, and 3 are cars.
Most families didn’t even bother to keep a car no matter how big there family was or how many kids they had, they would all squeeze into one motorcycle and be on there way out. Look at this actual family in Pakistan on the road!
I would go on writing about my stay in Pakistan, there is never enough to write about this country! So much things happen here that I actually feel like I limited myself in writing this post but for the sake of not wanting to let my readers fall asleep, this should do.
Although I was the only excited one in Karachi airport to be leaving, There’s ironically something about me that misses Pakistan even though I didn’t properly adjust to life there or like it. But I did admire there was tons of freedom amongst the citizens there.
No but seriously somebody has to stop everybody from throwing there trash on the streets. Having to kick aside empty cans and all sorts of trash from feet while walking on the side walk really was the highlight of my day.
As most of you could tell by now, I’m not much of a nationalist but I still have a bit of respect for my nation.
Overall my trip mainly consisted of numerous motorcycle rides a day, teaching my kind and generous neighbors English, and waking up at 5:00 pm everyday and going to bed at 7:00 am. Some of the place my family and I went to include visiting the Arabian sea (sea view), trying out all sorts of delicious street foods, and Quaid-azam mazar (the founder of Pakistan’s burial site, his name was Quaid-azam).
I am glad though that I got to meet up with some family members and family friends.
some people are just too cute
That pretty much sums up most my trip to Pakistan.
If you want to go a place with a diversity of foods and a very very different lifestyle than what your use to, Pakistan should be your next destination!
I have mixed feelings about going back but if my family will go then of course I have must go as well regardless of how many flaws there are in Pakistan, it’s my home country and I should be willing to go anytime 🙂
Just to set the record straight, I know most of you dear readers are not like this but unfortunately racism against Pakistanis and Muslims in general has been increasing greatly. Not to blame you guys for it obviously, I bet most of you are great people who wouldn’t be so ignorant 🙂 But still it’s urgent for us to spread the word that:
Not all Pakistani’s and Muslims are terrorists!
Especially since the Californian terrorist attacks recently it seems Pakistani’s are now mostly targeted. Spread the word and stop the hate; we’re all humans at the end of the day regardless of race, religion, or gender.
Just because you are a Muslim you are not a terrorist. I am a Pakistani Muslim and I am proud.
No one deserves to be discriminated against because of there beliefs regardless of any religion followed.
Anyways, thanks again so much for reading, this Sunday I will be posting my first recipe post since I have came back. I will be making a post teaching how to make Baked Ziti with the recipe included with tons of pictures along with each step.
I feel like this has become into a traveling blog more than a cooking one! Recipes coming soon along with normal posts following this one strictly on cooking tips and tricks; enough of the travel talk 🙂
– Chef/Author, Zubair M .
P.S. make sure not to miss any of these awesome past posts!
Baked to the Bone 