Homemade Ice Cream Bars Recipe

For anyone who knows my husband, you know his love for cooking and baking.  Since it was Memorial Weekend and we were headed up to the cabin he decided he wanted to put together a special treat for the family.  He came across two ice cream bar recipes from a website he follows called Serious Eats.  We primarily used their Klondike bar recipe but decided to combine the idea of toppings on their ice cream pop recipe.  We knew this recipe made with Bridgeman's Premium Ice Cream would be a hit for a hot summer weekend up north.  We have a newborn at home and were a little worried about how tricky and time consuming this might be but we made it happen and were so glad we did!  First off, we had to decide what flavors we wanted to do (and what toppings we might want to dip them in).  We decided to do vanilla ice cream with sprinkles, strawberry ice cream with crushed walnuts, caramelicious with sea salt and peppermint bon bon with crushed Andes mints.  

It is best to chop all toppings finely so they stick to the chocolate easily.  The first step was to create ice cream rectangles out of our 48 oz tubs.  We just dumped it out and started cutting it away into layers to create rectangles.

After we cut the ice cream into rectangles and placed on a cookie sheet we put them back in the freezer to make sure they stayed as hard as possible.  While they were re-freezing after having sat out for a little while during the cutting process we made the chocolate.  We used these chocolates + coconut oil. Click here for full recipe.

We decided not to use sticks and to make the ice cream bars with toppings sprinkled on one side.  Once the chocolate was ready, our toppings were chopped and the ice cream squares had re-hardened we stuck a fork in the ice cream rectangle and dipped in the chocolate.  At first we were submerging the entire rectangle and quickly realized the weight of the chocolate + the melting ice cream would make it break off the fork so after a few trials and error we started just balancing the ice cream on the fork over the bowl of chocolate and using a spoon to pour the chocolate over top.  This left a few 'bald spots' on the bottoms of the bars but turned out to be much more efficient for us.  

We also learned pretty quickly that if we took out the entire cookie sheet of ice cream squares that they would start to melt while we were in the dipping process so we actually left the tray in the freezer and pulled one square out at a time, coated it in chocolate, sprinkled with our topping of choice and then straight back to the freezer it went with the door closed while we worked on the next one.  We repeated this step with all of our flavors (again, we did four flavors- strawberry ice cream with crushed walnuts, caramelicious topped with sea salt, peppermint bon bon with crushed Andes mints and vanilla with sprinkles).  However, you canobviously use any flavor of ice cream and toppings that you like...the more creative the better! Any sortment of crushed candies would be delicious like M&M's, Reeses, Twix, Oreo etc.

This process took a little while but our little munchkin at home was enjoying hanging out in the kitchen with us while we worked!

Once we had all of our bars made we let them all sit in our chest freezer over night to make sure they re-hardened as much as possible before packing them up for the trip up north.  Notice in the pic below...we had a little issue with some of the ice cream still sticking to the paper on the cookie sheet but we new we would be putting them on a different plate to serve so the 'messy look' wouldn't matter. 

The next morning we packed them in tupperware covered with tin foil.  Then, we got a cooler and put dry ice in there to ensure the ice cream bars would stay cold for the duration of our 2.5 hour drive (which turned into a 4.5 hour drive with the Memorial Day traffic).  A little tip from the experts: putting ice cream in a cooler with regular ice will not keep the ice cream hard as the temperature of ice is warmer than the frozen ice cream...so in a sense it will actually help it melt.  Dry icewith a towel over the top in a cooler is your best bet during a long drive.  Tip #2- dry ice will suck up air so it is highly recommended to drive with good air flow (air conditioner on or at least having the fan on) or a window down in your car when there is dry ice in your vehicle.  In severe cases, the dry ice can suck up enough air to lower your air quality and make you actually pass out while driving...always better safe than sorry!  Once we got to the cabin we were able to surprise everyone with our delicious treats!  Needless to say they were a hit.  

Everyone loved the different flavors and having a chance to try them all. If we were to do it all over, I would probably have chopped our toppings even more finely than we did so we could load them on more evently.  I also felt like we could have loaded a little bit more of the chopped Andes mints on our peppermint bon bon bars. Unfortunately, we didn't bring any dry ice to bring leftovers home in the cooler so we were forced to eat them all....bummer! ;) We'd love to hear any stories from our fans of special treats they love to make with Bridgeman's Ice Cream....or try our recipe and share what flavor combos you loved the best!  We look forward to hearing from you all!