How to Make a Hobbit Door Ice Cream Sandwich

Cutting cakes at parties is annoying enough--it's something I deal with in order to create the vision I have in my head.  But scooping ice cream at a party?  No thank you!  Last year for the Sprinkles party, I came up with the idea of making miniature ice cream sandwiches instead.   Much, much better!

So this year, for the Hobbit party, I came up with making homemade hobbit door ice cream sandwiches.  Easy shape, and an iconic, very hobbity look.

Hobbit Door Ice Cream Sandwiches:

• One batch of No Fail Sugar Cookie dough
• Green food coloring
• one batch royal icing
• ice cream

Start by mixing up your sugar cookie dough.  Any sugar cookie dough will work, but I love the recipe linked above for No Fail Sugar Cookies.  Full of buttery awesomeness, they're the ultimate sugar cookie recipe, at least in my little world.  Add green food coloring to the recipe to get that iconic green door look without having to do any fussy royal icing decorating.  I used Americolor Electric Green.

Use a circle cookie cutter (you could even use a glass, if you don't have circle cookie cutters) to make your hobbit door shapes.  Use a sharp knife to score lines in each cookie (to make it look like planks of wood).  Pop the dough in the freezer.  DON'T SKIP THIS STEP.  By freezing the dough before baking it, and baking it straight from the freezer, you won't get that awful cookie spread that splooshes out and melts away that lovely detail you just added to the cookies.

Once the cookies are baked and completely cooled, it's time to fill with ice cream.  I took the vanilla ice cream out of the carton, and used my circle cutter as a guide to help me figure out how to carve the ice cream to the right shape.

I used my knife to carve a column of ice cream, then sliced and placed the disks between the cookie doors.  But you know, looking at these pictures now, I could have done better.  If I had it to do again, I would cut the rectangles, then slice them, and then use the cookie cutter to make perfect circles.  

Top with royal icing disks made ahead of time and dried, and dusted with gold luster dust.  I used clear piping gel to stick my doorknobs on, but you could use a very small bit of royal icing, too.

Leftover icing disks make great Bilbo's Brass Buttons, too!

And that's it!  Scrumptious ice cream sandwiches any halfling would appreciate.  Just remember to take them out of the freezer and actually serve them at the party.  Oops.  Anyone want to come over and have some ice cream sandwiches?