Caramel Ice Cream Sandwiches

This amazing (and sinful) dessert appears in the most recent Food and Wine magazine.It's a delicious hazelnut cookie, topped with a crunchy mixture of nutella, white chocolate and ice cream cones, and filled with caramel ice cream. Store-bought ice cream will do fine, but of course if you really want to invest, make some of your own. In case it wasn't obvious from the description, these are very sweet, so cut them into small rectangles and be forewarned.

It looked so good that I just had to try making it, and it tasted even better than it looks, which is one reason for posting it. The other reason is that I made this entire thing gluten free.

Caramel Ice Cream Sandwiches 

Ingredients (for 18 ice cream sandwiches): 

- 1 cup hazelnuts (The recipe calls for whole. I used chopped)

- 1 cup confectioner's sugar 

- 2 tbsp all purpose flour (gluten free all purpose also works) 

- 4 large egg whites

- Pinch of salt 

- 1/4 cup granulated sugar

- 4 oz (about 100 grams) white chocolate

- 1 cup nutella (I actually only had about 3/4 cup and it was fine)

- 6 ice cream "sugar cones" (gluten free cones work well), crushed

- 1 pint (a few scoops) caramel ice cream, soft enough to scoop 

Preparation: 

1. Preheat oven to 375 F/180 C. If you are using whole hazelnuts, put them in a pan and roast in the oven for about 12 minutes, until the skins split. Put the nuts in a clean kitchen towel, cool, and then rub them together to remove the skins. If you are using chopped hazelnuts you can just roast them for a few minutes on a dry pan on a medium flame or in the oven. Either way, put the roasted nut in a food processor, add the confectioner's sugar and the flour, and process until the nuts are finely ground. 

2. In a large mixer bowl, beat the egg whites with the salt until soft peaks form. Beat in the granulated sugar gradually, and keep beating until the whites are stiff. Gently fold in the nut mixture. Cover a baking tin with baking parchment paper and spread the batter on the parchment in a 9X2 inch (about 23X30 cm) rectangle. Bake in the still-hot oven for 20 minutes, until golden. Turn off the oven, open the oven door, and let the pastry cool in the oven with the door open for about an hour. 

3. In a microwave safe bowl, melt the white chocolate in 30 second increments, stirring between each increment, until smooth. Add the nutella and the crushed ice cream cones and stir.

4. Invert the cooled pastry onto a surface, peel off the parchment, and spread evenly with the nutella filling. Cut the pastry rectangle in half, so that you have two smaller rectangles. freeze both until the filling is set (this doesn't take very long). Spread ice cream over one half of the pastry, then close the sandwich and freeze for at least 4 hours. Slice into smaller rectangles and serve. The sliced rectangles will also keep quite well in an airtight container in the freezer.