Gluten Free Christmas Reindeer Cookie Ice Cream Sandwiches

This reindeer cookie ice cream sandwich is like a holiday cookie project disguised as dessert! It’s fun, festive, and just chaotic enough to keep the kids entertained (and covered in cocoa dust). Whip up these tasty treats together, and you’ll end up with something deliciously unique. Just don’t be surprised if more ice cream goes in mouths than on cookies!

Be sure to watch the video to see how it's done!

This recipe is adapted from a recipe by Chapman’s ice cream. We made it sugar free (using Swerve), changed the type of cocoa and, of course, gave it loads of holiday personality with this Rudolf cookie cutter we found at the Habitat for Humanity Re Store. See the recipe at the very bottom of this Instructable (or you can print the recipe here and follow along).

We’re also using certified Gluten Free Oat Flour (Only Oats) because Hubs is celiac. However, this cookie desert is perfect to serve guests whether they have dietary restrictions or not.

[If you’re looking for some of the things we used, we’ve got you covered (disclosure): The blue links in this post may be affiliate links. We earn a commission from qualifying purchases which we proudly donate to Alzheimer’s research. But don’t worry, you don’t pay a cent more! Thanks for helping to support our fundraiser!]

1. Doughmakers 14” x 20.5” Cookie Sheet
2. Glass mixing bowl with non slip bottom (ours is Pyrex) or batter bowl
3. Reindeer cookie cutter (the exact one we’re using is made by Ganz, but this one is very close in size)
4. Unbleached parchment paper
5. Silpat Silicone Baking Mat
6. Rolling pin

Decor

1. Candy eyeballs
2. Maraschino cherries
3. Red sparkle icing gel (this holds the cherry on. But if you don’t want to use cherries, you could just use this sparkle gel)
4. White sparkle icing gel (to hold eyes)

The cookie isn’t as soft as your typical commercially available ice cream sandwich; that’s because you need a dough stiff enough to be able to cut it with a cookie cutter.

There are several things we think are essential to the best holiday ice cream sandwich. First is the cocoa. We tried the cookie dough with natural cocoa and found them to be too bitter. So we switched to a dutch processed cocoa powder. It tends to be less bitter. You can read about the difference between natural and dutch processed here.

The other tip we have for you is to use powdered sugar instead of a granular one. Regular sugar tends to be gritty because the cookies only bake for 6 minutes. Personally, we avoid processed sugar as much as we can. However, we do use a sugar substitute called Swerve for baking, which also comes in the form of icing sugar.

Feel free to use real sugar if you prefer, but use icing sugar for best results; you definitely don’t want crunchy cookies.

Lastly the ice cream! There’s really only one gluten free ice cream on the market here in Canada that we can even eat. But we would still buy Chapman’s boxed ice cream even if we weren’t gluten-free!

We cut slices to use as a filling between the two cookies – perfect for cutting with a cookie cutter! So a box of ice cream is ideal for that. Of course, you can buy any ice cream and scoop and fill instead if you wish. It would need to be soft enough to squish into the sandwich so it will be a little more rustic than if you cut it.

Feel free to switch up the flavour of the ice cream too, instead of the traditional vanilla typically used in ice cream sandwiches. We used to be able to find candy cane ice cream at Christmas time. But sadly it’s not available in Chapman’s gluten free lineup this year. Cue the sad emoji! However, by using peppermint flavouring in the chocolate cookie instead of vanilla, I think we’ll make due :).

NOTE: since substituting Dutch Processed Cocoa for the natural cocoa we used originally, we learned that sometimes you have to also swap the baking soda for baking powder. According to this article, you might want to also swap the 1/2 tsp of baking soda in our recipe to 1 tsp of baking powder instead. We haven’t tried this swap and thought the cookies turned out fine, but we’ll leave that up to you to experiment with.

Get the kids to help you measure all the ingredients so they're ready to go. Then you can take over with creaming the butter and sugar together with the hand mixer.

For this Christmas ice cream sandwich, we're adding peppermint flavouring instead of vanilla, but use whatever extract you prefer. If you use vanilla, be sure to double the quantity in the ice cream sandwich recipe.

Depending on how lumpy your cocoa is, you might want to sift it into the oat flour, baking powder and salt before combining together.

Once you mix the dry ingredients into the wet, it may still look clumpy and you'll think you've made a mistake. But don't worry! Grab a wooden spoon to make sure it's mixed well.

Once you roll it into balls it will come together to a smooth consistency.

Roll each ball between two pieces of parchment. Then cut out your reindeer shape with the cookie cutter. If you prefer, you can roll this out into a larger rectangle, cut the shapes, then re-roll the scraps. However, I like to do these individually.

Transfer your reindeer onto a cookie sheet lined with a silicone mat (we use Silpat).

You should get at least 12 cookies (plus a leftover to snack on if you roll like me)! But if will all depend on how thick or thin you roll these.

By the way, never cut directly on a Silpat or silicone sheet with a cookie cutter or knife. You could cut through to the fibreglass and you don't want that in your food!

If you like, you can use a skewer to poke in some eyes into half of these. For some reason, holes are traditional in an ice cream sandwich. But making holes for eyes in the cookie dough isn't necessary if you decorate these as I show you further ahead!

Pop them into a 350 degree oven and bake for 6 minutes. They will puff up slightly.

In the meantime, you can cut some maraschino cherries in half and dry them with a paper towel for later.

Let the cookies cool. Then pop them into the freezer for at least 1/2 an hour.

Now the fun part. Grab some candy eyeballs and stick them on using white icing gel. You can make your own icing to glue the elements down, but these squeeze tubes just make decorating so fast and easy!

Then stick on the cut maraschino cherry with the red gel for the nose.

Set those aside and prepare the bottom of your ice cream sandwiches. Slice the ice cream and cut it out with the reindeer cookie cutter. Place the ice cream onto the bottom cookie.

Now, sandwich the decorated reindeer on top of the ice cream layer. So fun!

Serve these ice cream sandwiches immediately. Or prepare them all ahead and then freeze until ready to serve. You can wrap your reindeer ice cream sandwiches in plastic wrap or parchment and place them back in the freezer. They'll keep for up to 3 months. But we guarantee they won't last that long!

Aren't these just the best Christmas ice cream sandwiches? I'm sure these are all the rage at the North Pole and will likely be all the rage in our household too when we serve these fun treats over the holidays!

For more cookie ideas, check out the links on this post: Ice Cream Sandwiches Recipe. You'll also find the recipe for these reindeer ice cream sandwiches that you can print out and keep on-hand for the holidays!

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By the way, this treat is not only for kids. It's also a great dessert to serve adults! We had some of the warmest Fall days on record when I tested these out for the first time. As a matter of fact, Hubs was enjoying eating these outside amongst the fallen leaves; I can’t believe this was November in Canada!

It may seem overindulgent, but ever the chocoholic, I'll be enjoying this easy ice cream sandwich recipe with a hot cuppa cocoa - sporting our crochet mug cozy (grab our free crochet pattern if you'd like to make one too).

If you want to 'behave' yourself in he new year so you can eat more of these over the holidays, check out our green goddess dressing recipe!

Or throw caution to the wind with our hot cocoa bar sign. It will inspire you to go all out and decorate a hot cocoa station!

If reindeer are your theme this year, you won't want to miss this adorable reindeer wreath to decorate for Christmas!

And if you don't want to bake, you can still make an impressive no bake dessert with our Christmas bark recipe.

Visit us here to print off a copy of the ice cream sandwich recipe .