The treat’s a guaranteed crowd-pleaser—a thick slab of vanilla ice cream, served between two chewy (not crispy) chocolate chip cookies, and every millimeter of exposed filling is covered in mini semisweet chocolate chips. It’s so memorable that Time named it one of the top 10 most iconic junk foods. Richard LaMotta, its inventor, created it to appeal to an older, more sophisticated audience, slapping on double the price tag of other frozen treats (a whopping $2, back in 1981). Clearly, people didn’t mind paying more for what’s essentially two treats—cookies and ice cream—but there’s always been one limitation to it: It’s palm-sized, and not so easy to share.
This dinner-plate-sized Chipwich takes care of that problem, making one monstrous dessert that can feed 10—if you’re willing to share. Serve it by the slice, like you would a regular cake (tip: dip the knife in warm water before cutting into it, for easier slicing). Make sure that whatever you do, don’t use slow-churned or extra smooth ice cream; it melts almost immediately, making it hard to enjoy slices of this cake. Or even have it look like a cake.
The idea came to us in a flash of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids-inspired brilliance. We thought we were breaking the Internet with such an original idea. “Hey, we’ll pay homage to the Chipwich with a super-sized version!” But, before we could even cue up DJ Khaled’s “All I Do Is Win,” the Internet, as it’s been known to do, immediately humbled us with one Google search. It’s been done a hundred times before, in dozens of different ways. Cookies and Cups’ use of a springform pan was particularly inspired, as are the legions of people baking cookies from scratch. You could totally do that, but we’re lazy, and didn’t want to bother with springform pans.
In our method, we piled about 15 scoops of vanilla ice cream onto a frozen chocolate chip cookie, then pressed another frozen cookie on top, letting it smooth things out. For that fresh-from-the-manufacturing-line sense of uniformity, we baked the cookies in two 9-inch round cake pans, letting them cool and then freezing them for 20 minutes so they’d be easy to work with without crumbling or breaking.
You may not be able to buy the Chipwich anymore (Nestlé discontinued it after buying the brand, since it already sold the very similar Chocolate Chip Sandwich Cookie), but you can own every party you go to with this epic tribute to the original.
Ingredients
2 packages/logs refrigerated chocolate chip cookie dough
1 half-gallon good quality ice cream (no slow-churned)
3 c. mini chocolate chips
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line two 9-inch cake pans with parchment paper. Press each package of cookie dough into the bottom of each pan. Bake both until golden brown, about 20 minutes. Let cool, then freeze 30 minutes.
2. Remove cookies from freezer. Cover one cookie with vanilla ice cream, spreading top to create an even layer. Place other frozen cookie on top and press to push ice cream out to the sides. Smooth the ice cream along the sides, then put back in the freezer for another 2 hours.
3. Press chocolate chips around the ice cream until completely covered. Then place back in freezer for another hour, or until ready to serve.
