Sticky Toffee Cookie Ice Cream Sandwiches – it’s a mouthful both literally and figuratively. The literal mouthful is the one you should focus on, though. Buttery, sticky toffee cookies, studded with dates and ginger, filled with a swathe of vanilla ice cream and a molten river of butterscotch. THAT’S WHAT’S UP. Click here to go right to the recipe!

I don’t know why I’m on an ice cream kick in the middle of winter, but that’s what’s happening. It’s cold, the wind is rattling up through the floorboards in my house, and I’m licking ice cream cones like they’re going out of style. This little number, here, though is not so much about the ice cream, as it is about the cookie. Sticky Date Cookies that is, or Sticky Toffee if you’re in the UK where they like to pretend there aren’t any dates in their pudding (there are).

These cookies are IN-SANE. Why? Because they taste exactly like sticky date pudding. It’s uncanny. The caramel notes, the buttery notes –  close your eyes and you’d swear that you were digging into a bowl of the classic recipe. Rarely does it happen, when you try to jack-knife an old recipe into a new format, that the transition goes so smoothly. I can only imagine that this transition was somehow meant to be. Smiled upon by the baking angels maybe? Or just really good for normal reasons.

Let me tell you about these cookies; they are perfect. They are everything you ever wanted in a cookie. Gooey, chewy centres, crispy browned edges, the whole heaven-in-a-mouthful shebang, textural nirvana. They’re studded with chunks of chewy medjool dates and yet more chew from crystallized ginger. If you really hate dates or ginger, then move along, these cookies are not for you. But if you have no problem with classic old-person flavours, then throw an afghan blanket over your legs, sit down next to me, and prepare to be happy.

Once I tasted a bite of the first test batch of these cookies I knew they would make perfect ice cream sandwiches. Adding the butterscotch sauce was a no brainer. Of course these drip all over everywhere, and sauce runs down your arm, and ice cream smushes all over your face. Life and ice cream sandwiches are messy. But dammit if these aren’t my favourite kitchen discovery of the whole year so far! They’re just so damn good. PLEASE try them.

Now let me know – classic sticky date pudding is my favourite Winter dessert, what’s yours? Apple crumble? Baked apples? Or are you, like me, perversely in favour of ice cream in the cold?

xx Sarah.