Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies — The Ice Cream Sandwich Cookies We Ate in the Backyard

The heat arrived like it had something to prove. Ninety-four degrees by Tuesday and the humidity made the air feel like you were swimming through warm Jello. The garden loved it. Jack's corn is four feet tall and growing fast, the tomato plants are loaded with green fruit turning pink, and the sunflowers have buds that are the size of baseballs. The garden is a jungle. A productive, beautiful jungle that my six-year-old created with fifty dollars in seeds and soil and the stubbornness of a Weber.

I made a watermelon salad for dinner Monday because it was too hot to think about anything that required heat. Cubed watermelon, crumbled feta cheese, fresh mint from the pot on the deck, a squeeze of lime, a drizzle of olive oil. It sounds weird. It's not weird. It's perfect — sweet and salty and cool and exactly what you need when Iowa decides to become the surface of the sun. Kevin ate it with skepticism and then ate the rest of the bowl. Emma said it was "fancy." I said feta cheese is not fancy. She said for us it is. Fair point.

Noah came home from STEM camp talking about artificial intelligence in a way that made me feel both proud and slightly afraid. He's eleven. He's talking about neural networks. I don't know what a neural network is. I know what a network of mason jars looks like and I know what a network of farm families looks like and neither of those is what Noah means. He's going to live in a world I don't fully understand, and I'm going to feed him while he does it, and that's my contribution to the future of technology: sandwiches and cookies.

I took the kids to the pool Wednesday. Emma did cannonballs. Noah read a book in the shade. Jack sat on the pool steps and let the water lap at his ankles and watched the lifeguard rake the deck with the same concentration he watches anything that involves maintenance and care. He's studying. He's always studying. Not books — the world. How things are tended. How things are maintained. How things are kept alive.

I made ice cream sandwiches from scratch Saturday. Chocolate chip cookies from the State Fair recipe, slightly underbaked so they're soft, with vanilla ice cream sandwiched between. Wrapped in wax paper, frozen overnight, eaten in the backyard with melting ice cream dripping down chins and onto shirts. Summer in Iowa is ice cream on shirts and corn in the backyard and the sound of kids yelling from the pool. I'll take it. All of it.

Those ice cream sandwiches Saturday were the kind of thing I want to remember — the melting, the mess, the backyard, all of it. If you want to make them yourself, the cookie part is everything: you need something soft enough to bite through without the ice cream shooting out the other side, and slightly underbaking is the secret every time. I’ve been making this gluten free chocolate chip cookie recipe for a few years now and it works beautifully for sandwiches — chewy, a little gooey, and sturdy enough to hold a generous scoop of vanilla without falling apart until your six-year-old is ready for it to.

Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies (for Ice Cream Sandwiches)

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 10 min | Total Time: 25 min (plus overnight freezing) | Servings: 12 ice cream sandwiches

Ingredients

• 2 1/4 cups gluten free all-purpose flour blend (with xanthan gum)
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp fine sea salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
• 2 large eggs, room temperature
• 2 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1 1/2 quarts good vanilla ice cream, slightly softened
• Wax paper, for wrapping

Instructions

1. Preheat and prep. Preheat your oven to 375°F. Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.
2. Whisk dry ingredients. In a medium bowl, whisk together the gluten free flour, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
3. Cream butter and sugars. In a large bowl, beat the softened butter with both sugars on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.
4. Add eggs and vanilla. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then mix in the vanilla extract until fully combined.
5. Combine wet and dry. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and stir until just combined — do not overmix. Fold in the chocolate chips.
6. Scoop and slightly flatten. Drop rounded tablespoons of dough onto the prepared baking sheets, spacing about 2 inches apart. Gently flatten each ball slightly with your palm — you want cookies that are wide enough to hold a scoop of ice cream.
7. Bake until just set. Bake for 9–10 minutes, until the edges are just golden but the centers still look slightly underdone. Do not overbake. The cookies will continue to set as they cool and you need them soft and pliable for sandwiches.
8. Cool completely. Let cookies cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. This step is important — warm cookies will melt the ice cream too fast.
9. Assemble the sandwiches. Match cookies into pairs of similar size. Working quickly, place one cookie flat-side up, add a generous scoop (about 1/3 cup) of slightly softened vanilla ice cream to the center, and press the second cookie on top, flat-side down. Press gently until the ice cream just reaches the edges.
10. Wrap and freeze. Wrap each sandwich tightly in wax paper and place on a baking sheet in the freezer. Freeze for at least 4 hours, or overnight. Eat outside. Expect drips.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 420 | Protein: 5g | Fat: 22g | Carbs: 54g | Fiber: 2g | Sodium: 210mg