Grain Free Sunflower Snickerdoodle Ice Cream Sandwiches

Ice cream dripping down my wrist. And I don't care a bit. It's Summertime and the heat is oppressive. My kitchen holds the humid air to its chest like a weeping child. My whole body is covered in sweat. But ice cream is here. Sandwiched between cookies and I'm ten again, sitting on my front porch with an ice cream sandwich sticking to my fingers, watching gem dragonflies glint as they flit back and forth from the driveway to the garden.

This is about as lazy as I get with ice cream treats. I made some badass sunflower cinnamon cookies, nutty and rich and aromatic. And I squished coconut ice cream in between. I usually go for Coconut Bliss because it has the fewest ingredients on the label and is made with whole food ingredients (except guar gum). And let's face it, after already expending the effort to make cookies on a hot day, am I really going to wait around for 3-4 more hours for hand churned ice cream? That's a big ol NOPE.

Maybe if it was like 60 degrees and I felt like killing an afternoon. But I made these snickerdoodle ice cream sandwiches around 6pm on a weekday without a whole lot of preplanning so taking the easy road made 100% perfect sense.

But these cookies though. They're grain free but not in the least bit crumbly, edging between crisp and soft. And they're made with coconut sugar, which gives them a lovely, deep, brown-sugar flavor. Not to mention that they're vegan without skimping on any taste or lusciousness whatsoever. It's always my intention for everything on the blog to be the most delicious. Whether it's a kale salad or watermelon juice or fancy lil cakes. So, yeah, simple cookies need to be fantastic. As these are, no question.

That's not to say that everything I eat or make is a unique star of deliciousness in the universe. I eat plain toast with almond butter and eat dry flax crackers right out of the bag, not to mention my habitual weird sometimes semi-gross smoothie experiments which I drink even when they're the embodied color of meh. 

But when it comes to something classic and nostalgic like this recipe, I really wanted to hit a flavor home run. The bat cracks, the ball hits the bleachers, and we all run around like mad with our arms in the air because sweet nut & seed snicker doodles with ice cream smushed in between?! Yep. Ya gonna love these, bae.

Sunflower Snickerdoodle Ice Cream Sandwiches (Grain Free, Vegan)

Recipe Type: Dessert

Author: Renee Shuman (Will Frolic for Food)

Prep time: 50 mins

Cook time: 10 mins

Total time: 1 hour

Serves: 6 servings

Sweet, nutty, cinnamon-laced grain-free sugar cookies with ice cream smashed in the middle. These snickerdoodle ice cream sandwiches are luscious and perfect on a hot Summer day!

Ingredients

• cinnamon sugar
• 1/4 cup coconut sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• cookies
• 1/2 cup raw unsalted sunflower seeds
• 1/2 cup almond meal
• 1/2 cup unsweet coconut flakes
• 1/2 cup coconut sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 teaspoons [url href="http://www.amazon.com/Frontier-Psyllium-Husk-Powder-Ounce/dp/B00016XJRY/ref=sr_1_4?s=grocery&ie=UTF8&qid=1437083274&sr=1-4&keywords=psyllium+husk"]psyllium[/url] (whole and powdered are both fine)
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• pinch sea salt
• 1/4 cup melted coconut oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice or apple cider vinegar
• ice cream sandwiches
• 12 sunflower snickerdoodle cookies
• vegan vanilla or caramel coconut ice cream (I like[url href="http://coconutbliss.com/bliss/"]luna & larry's brand[/url])

Instructions

1. Combine the coconut sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl and set aside.
2. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper. Set aside.
3. In a high powered blender, blitz the sunflower seeds until they just pass the point of being a dry flour and start to release some oils and become sunflower butter. It should be somewhat malleable when you pinch it together between your fingers.
4. Scrape the sunflower butter into a medium mixing bowl.
5. Add the almond meal.
6. Blitz the coconut flakes into coconut butter (here's me go-to recipe for coconut butter).
7. Scrape the coconut butter into the bowl. Stir to mix everything together loosely.
8. Add the coconut sugar, baking powder, psyllium, cinnamon and salt and whisk everything together.
9. Add the melted coconut oil, vanilla extract, lemon juice and stir everything together, mixing until the dough is evenly saturated and malleable.
10. Form the dough into a ball and wrap in parchment or cellophane.
11. Chill the dough for 30 minutes in the fridge.
12. Once the dough is chilled, remove it from the fridge and preheat the oven to 325F.
13. Pinch off golf-ball sized amounts of the dough and roll into balls. Roll each cookie dough ball in cinnamon sugar. Set the balls at least an inch apart on the baking sheet.
14. Using the tines of a fork, flatten each cookie to about 1/2 inch thickness.
15. Bake for 10 minutes. Let cool completely.

for the ice cream sandwiches:

1. Once the cookies have cooled completely, add one scoop of ice cream to 6 of the cookies and sandwich each one with a top cookie. Eat immediately or, for best results, freeze immediately for at least an hour up to overnight before serving. Enjoy!

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