Choc Chip Ice Cream Bowls

I made these a while ago, but I always get so excited about eating them that I don't remember to take a pic until I'm done eating. You'd be able to see a bigger contrast between the bowl and the ice cream if someone hadn't eaten all of the chocolate ice cream. Shame on whoever did that!

This is my new favorite way to eat ice cream, esp when it comes to Blockette. She is such a slow eater that most of her ice cream ends up as soup at the bottom of her bowl. With the cookie bowl, all the juices get soaked up by the cookie. It's like dessert for your dessert!

The recipe was easy to put together, but the dough was beastly. I followed the recommended time for chilling the dough, 2 hrs. I don't think a longer chill time would have helped. Once I began to roll the dough out it warmed up very quickly, and stuck to the wax paper. I had to stick the scraps in the freezer before rolling the dough out a 2ND time. I mistakenly put the dough I had already cut out on the inverted muffin pan while I fought with cutting out the remaining dough. Since it took so long to cut all of the dough out, the dough on the muffin pan sort of oozed down which created a few holes in the cups. I had thought I patched them all before baking, but I wound up missing a few.

Next time I will place the cut pieces between wax paper and place them in the freezer until all of the dough has been cut. I will also roll them a bit thicker than suggested. 1/8 of an inch seemed too thin. Then again, I got 12 cookies vs. the 10 the recipe says it makes.

I tested a cookie cup, plain with no ice cream in it and thought, on their own, they were nothing special. I'm used to all butter cookies and I could really taste the shortening. I think an easy fix for this is to use butter flavored shortening. I would not substitute the shortening for butter. I think an all butter cookie bowl would be too chewy. It would get too soggy and fall apart before you finished your ice cream.

Here's the recipe:
Ice Cream Cookie bowls From Gourmet Mom on the Go
1/4 c. shortening
1/4 c. butter, softened
2/3 c. white sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. baking powder
1 1/2 c. flour
1/4 c. miniature chocolate chips

Beat shortening, butter, and sugar in a large bowl. Add egg and vanilla. Add baking powder, salt, and flour. Stir in chocolate chips. Divide dough in half, shape each half into a flat disk and wrap in plastic. Chill the dough at least 2 hrs in the fridge. Heat oven to 375 degrees. Turn two 12-cup muffin tins bottom side up and cover 10 of the cups with aluminum foil (5 on each pan--leave every other cup empty so there's some space between them). Spray the foil with nonstick spray.

Unwrap 1 disk of dough, place it between 2 sheets of wax paper and roll it out to 1/8-inch thickness. Cut out 4-inch circles of dough and place each one over a cup bottom, smoothing out any cracks. Repeat with the other disk, re-rolling and reusing any scraps. Bake the cookie cups for 10-12 min til light brown. Let the cool for 10 min then remove the foil and cookies from muffin pan. Peel off foil and let cups cool completely. Fill with ice cream or your favorite dessert and enjoy!