Fluffy donuts make the perfect vehicle for an irresistible summer treat. Cool down with an incredible donut ice cream sandwich!

Nothing is better than beating the heat of summer with an ice cream sandwich. Get creative by using your favorite donut to make your next treat. You can get super creative by mixing and matching your donuts and ice cream together in new and exciting ways.

Ingredients

So the base recipe is literally only two ingredients:

• Donuts
• Ice cream

But you don’t need to stop there, and I encourage you to keep going with it. You can do so much beyond using any of your favorite donuts with your favorite ice cream. Add in a delicious sauce, syrup, fruits, and so much more. Some of my favorites include:

• Pie filling
• Roasted or macerated fruits
• Salted caramel sauce
• Peanut butter hot fudge sauce
• Nutella
• Cookie crumbles
• Streusel topping
• Crumbled cereal

Tips

Yes, making a good donut ice cream sandwich can be as simple as scooping some ice cream between a cut donut, but if you’ve found your ice cream melting too fast or the ice cream is so hard that you smush the donut trying to get an even spread of ice cream, you will need to check out my tips for success.

• Refrigerate your ice cream for 20 minutes. When you leave your ice cream at room temperature, you end up with ice cream that is still solid in the center, but melted at the edges. Refrigerating your ice cream allows the ice cream to soften evenly throughout just enough to make it workable without being too melty.
• Don’t cut your donuts until you are ready to make your sandwiches. Leaving the donuts cut ruins the texture inside, drying it out and making it unpleasant.
• Make your donut ice cream sandwiches to order! What makes these sandwiches amazing is the contrast of the melt in your mouth donut and the cold, creamy ice cream. You lose that contrast if you try to save you ice cream sandwiches in the freezer.

Prepping ahead

So, the last tip says you need to make your sandwiches to-order. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t have some things prepped ahead of time to make it quicker and easier to make these incredible treats.

Prep your ice cream. You can do this by slowly softening the ice cream in the refrigerator like I previously mentioned. After that, you can portion out your ice cream. Here is how you do that:

1. Place a sheet of plastic wrap on a flat surface.
2. Take your softened ice cream from the refrigerator.
3. Add 1 or 2 scoops of the ice cream onto the plastic wrap.
4. Quickly, but gently shape the ice cream into a disc roughly as wide and round as your doughnuts.
5. Wrap up the ice cream in the plastic wrap.
6. Freeze, then place the wrapped discs in a freezer bag or other airtight container.
7. Unwrap the ice cream and add it to your sliced doughnuts when you are ready to serve!

Prep your toppings and add-ins. If you are getting creative, you can keep some of your favorite toppings and add-ins ready and handy for quick assembly.

For example, I will keep sliced peaches I pan-fried with brown sugar and cinnamon in the refrigerator alongside caramel sauce so I can make a quick caramel peach pie-inspired donut ice cream sandwich.

You can also keep a small container of cookie or cereal crumbs to add to your sandwiches at a moment’s notice.

F.A.Q.s

Related recipes

If you loved every last bite of your donut ice cream sandwich, you will need to try my sugar cookie ice cream sandwich and my churro ice cream sandwich. Try making this with my strawberry shortcake ice cream, coffee oreo ice cream, or even my horchata ice cream. My vanilla ice cream is a great bank canvas. If you want to make your own donuts, try this lemon chamomile brioche doughnut.