Kid-friendly Holiday Entertaining Idea: DIY Ice Cream Sandwich Bar

11/15/2016 by The Mama Maven

While I may be a fan of pumpkin spice everything, my kids aren’t. If you are going to have kids over for your holiday celebrations, make sure you have something very kid-friendly for a dessert. I’m really excited to partner with the Dancing Deer Baking Co. to give a fun and festive entertaining dessert idea for this holiday season. This one’s designed for the kids, but I bet adults will love this too!

I will totally admit that I am not much of a baker, even though I enjoy cooking. Plus I don’t have the time, as I am a busy mostly-work-from home mom. So when I serve desserts when I entertain, I usually will do something semi-homemade that can really be jazzed up for wowing my company. This DIY Ice Cream Sandwich Bar, using cookies and brownies from Dancing Deer Baking Co., ice cream, and toppings like rainbow sprinkles, mini chocolate chips, and mini M&M’s, definitely fits the bill.

Check out my video on how easy these are to make:

To make it fun for your little guests, decorate your table in bright, but washable tablecloths and accents. For a pop of color, I used a festive bright yellow tablecloth, with a fun runner with gold edging and a garland of stars, which I picked up at my local big box store. You don’t have to go all out, but make everything look festive!

Next, I set up a platter of Triple Chocolate Chip Cookies, Molasses Clove Cookies, and Chocolate Chunk Brownies from Dancing Deer Baking Co. Their Classic Holiday Brownie and Cookie Gift ($44.99) would be perfect for this.

Next, set out your toppings. I used rainbow sprinkles, mini M&M’s, and mini chocolate chips. You could also use sliced up candy bars, chocolate sprinkles — anything dry that can sliced up or is small. While I am a big fan of fruit, it’s not going to stick to your ice cream!

Next, take several spoonfuls or scoops of the ice cream flavors of your choice. I chose vanilla and mint chocolate chip. Each person may use between 2-3 spoonfuls per ice cream sandwich. Figure that kids may have 1 ice cream sandwich and adults may prefer to have 2 of them, so make sure you have enough cookies from Dancing Deer Baking Co.!

The trick is to set the ice cream out at the last minute (the weather may be colder here in the Northeast, but you don’t want ice cream soup!).

Then let kids get creative (and yes, a little messy) making these. You can have big t-shirts to serve as aprons and have plenty of napkins around for clean up.

Show kids what to do first and then let the ice cream sandwich making commence!

My daughter loved making her ice cream sandwich.

It was easy for her to scoop the ice cream onto the cookies.

She wanted to use all the toppings!

The end result? Delicious!

Dancing Deer Baking Co. is company of people who are passionate about food, nature, and aesthetics. Their products are known for a truly superior taste, artful but simple packaging and pure, high-quality ingredients. They blend traditional artisan baking with innovative flavor combinations and they think packaging should be as artful, honest and as good as the food.
They make a perishable product without preservatives because they believe in the principles of purity and freshness in food. Their products are always baked from scratch and Kosher (which is terrific for my holiday entertaining, as my brother-in-law’s family is Kosher and we spend many holidays with them).