Learn the secret to making the best ice cream sandwich cookies ever! Crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside, and the perfect thickness to hold a huge scoop of ice cream. 

I have a secret. A cookie secret. A secret to making the best ice cream sandwich cookies ever.

Before I tell you, let’s break down what is needed for the best ice cream sandwich cookies.

-A crunchy outside that balances the velvety ice cream
-A soft and chewy center so you can bite in easily
-A thick cookie that can hold up to ice cream (because no one wants their cookies breaking into a million pieces)
-Lots of chocolate. duh.

So. To get a cookie with all of these things, I did some research. And I found that there is one thing that guarantees a perfect ice cream sandwich cookie. Want to know it?

It’s refrigeration.

Refrigerating your cookie dough is like marinating chicken. You can totally have the chicken right out of the package, but if you want it to be soft, flavorful, and delicious, you need to give it time to marinate.

Why do you need to do this with cookie dough? What’s that about?

Well, I found this article from the kings of bakers, King Arthur Flour, and they break it all down.

Refrigerating your dough does multiple things. For one, it chills your fat (in our case, butter), so that when you actually cook the cookies, the butter is solid. It’s like pie dough– it will leave you with a crispier and more delicious product.

This also makes your cookies flatten out less, as the butter doesn’t melt as much.

Refrigerating your cookies also makes them taste better. By letting the dough chill, the flour breaks down into a simple carb and sugar, making the flavor more concentrated and pronounced.

And for those of you who don’t really care about the science of it all, all you need to know is that putting your dough in the fridge makes cookies INFINITELY BETTER.

As for this particular recipe, the addition of brown sugar and molasses makes the cookies more flavorful than the traditional regular sugar cookie. And a whole cup of chocolate chips? Well, that’s a given 🙂

Rebe and I have been eating these babies straight out of the freezer for a week. It’s worth almost breaking your teeth to get a bite of that totally delicious ice cream sandwich cookie.