These ice cream sandwiches are inspired by the ones from Disney’s Animal Kingdom. I saw a couple videos about them and they sounded amazing! Since I can’t just go to Animal Kingdom to try them, I decided to make a version at home. I haven’t tried the original one and am not sure of its exact flavor, so it’d be hard to call these a copycat. However, I watched and read a lot of what has been said about them and feel like I am at least very close. If nothing else, it’s a fun version to try at home. And if you’ve never heard of them, just make them because they are awesome!

Testing, Testing!

I spent a good bit of time testing the brownie and cookie dough layers. I wanted the ice cream sandwich to have a good bite and not have one layer significantly firmer than the other. The trickiest layer was the cookie dough. Cookie dough is dense and made with butter, and both factors make for a very firm layer when frozen. So, I started with reducing the butter and replacing it with oil. The butter/oil combination gives both the flavor from butter and a softer texture when frozen from the oil.

Another thing I added was some corn syrup, similar to adding corn syrup to the fudge layer of my Copycat Dairy Queen Ice Cream Cake. Corn syrup doesn’t fully freeze, so it helps things stay soft in the freezer. That was the final secret to nailing the texture, I think, because the cookie dough came out perfectly!

As for the brownie layer, I tested out my classic easy brownie recipe (oil-based) and my newest fudgy brownie recipe (butter-based), but without the chocolate chips. The brownie layer was naturally softer when frozen than the cookie dough with both versions. I ultimately decided to go withe the fudgy brownie recipe. It’s still soft when frozen, but also holds up a little better to the ice cream and cookie dough layers to meet their firmness. I’m so in love with the final version of these – firm enough to slice and hold the ice cream, soft enough to bite into straight from the freezer.

This cherry chocolate chip cake is an old recipe that I decided to update with even more cherry flavor. The chopped cherries really add so much, plus the cake itself is different. It’s now more closely based on my moist vanilla cake, with changes that help keep the chocolate chips and chopped cherries afloat. It was good before but those few changes make it even better now.

There are cherries and chocolate chips in literally every bite of this cake, without there being too much of one or the other. When it comes to the cherries, you need maraschino cherries. And not just any maraschino cherries, but the bright red classic ones. The ones they put in drinks at restaurants. With the corn syrup and all. I tested this recipe with a few brands to be sure it would work with them all and it did. However, the more natural maraschino cherries didn’t give the cake nearly as much flavor. So, if you want to be sure you taste the cherry, stick with the bright red, unnatural ones. Ha!

I’m totally loving this coconut custard pie recipe. Various versions of this classic pie have been around for a while, but when testing them, I was a little disappointed. The textures were funky, they were over the top on the shredded coconut, or the eggs scrambled. There was rarely much “custard” to be found and they weren’t something I’d bake again. They definitely didn’t meet the idea I had in my head.

I decided to take a page from my honey pie recipe and partially cook the custard on the stove, before finishing it in the oven. So this recipe actually begins with that honey pie recipe, with some changes, of course. If you’ve ever made that pie – and you should, it’s one of my absolute favorites – then you know that the texture of this pie is amazing. This is a true custard-based pie with coconut flavor that’s not too much, and shredded coconut that complements the custard, rather than taking it over. It’s so good and is the new way you should make coconut custard pie.

These strawberry brownies are one of my new faves. The strawberry and brownie combination is delicious and the two parts come together so perfectly. The strawberry mixture on top soaks into the brownie just a bit, giving them a super moist, fudgy quality that is hard to resist. And the fresh pop of fruit with the chocolatey base is perfect for summer!

I did a good bit of testing with this brownie to get it just right. The brownie base is my popular “like a box mix” brownie recipe. It’s a little more cakey than fudgy, which worked better after much testing for a couple of reasons.

First, the batter is a little thinner, so it lets the strawberry sauce sink into the batter just a bit to create little pockets for it to rest in, rather than just sitting on top and creating an awkward top layer. Second, the strawberry sauce seeps into the brownie a bit (but not too much), so it maintains itself as a separate layer, while also giving it a super moist and fudgy texture.