Frosty Times Call for a Frosty Dessert

Winter is almost here, at least in most parts of the U.S., so why am I writing about ice cream?  This year on Thanksgiving, I served ice cream in addition to pumpkin pie.  Not pumpkin pie a la mode, after all, whipped cream is the proper topping for pumpkin pie.  (In the husband's case, lots and lots of whipped cream.)  In our family of four, there are only two pumpkin pie eaters -- the husband and our daughter.  Daughter likes it so much she has even been known to request a pumpkin pie for her month of May birthday!  Our son and I, however, are not pumpkin pie fans.  So when I asked him what he wanted for his Thanksgiving dessert, he asked for "that ice cream dessert."

I got the recipe for "that ice cream dessert" when we lived in the little town of Harvard, Illinois.  Harvard is the end of the train line, so when we were ready to move out of our Chicago condo and into a single family house, that's where we wound up.  We just kept going out until we found something decent we could afford and, before we knew it, we were at the end of the line in Harvard.

Harvard is a really small town.  When we lived there, the population was around 6,000 people.  It has increased since then to more than 9,000.  At one time, Harvard was the center point of an area with the greatest milk production in the nation.  Thus, the big event in Harvard each year is Milk Days, complete with a parade, a carnival, a Milk Queen, bed races, and big wheel races.  Our daughter was in preschool when we lived there, so the big wheel race was important. She competed and lost.  Our neighbor, whose daughter was the same age, put his child in training for the big wheel race.  I am not making this up.  He took his four-year-old daughter to an empty parking lot several times before the race for training.  She won her age category.  In a couple of years, she was entered in the Milk Days Princess competition and eventually was crowned Milk Queen.  So I suppose that early training paid off.

The logo my husband designed.

I belonged to a women's group named Women for Harvard.  It was a good group of women, mostly young. We raised money to stock a little store that was set up one weekend in December for Shopping with Santa.  Children could come in, visit with Santa Claus, have their picture taken, and be taken into a secret store -- no parents allowed -- to shop.  Gifts cost no more than a couple of dollars.  There was a sample of each item and the rest were wrapped, so the child could surprise a family member on Christmas morning.  That was such a wonderful event.  Sadly, I don't think they have the store anymore.  What they do have is the same group logo that my husband designed for them twenty years ago.  It features Harmilda, the town mascot.  I really can't believe they are still using a cow logo for a women's group!  Anyway, we always had dessert at our monthly meetings, which rotated among the members' homes. One meeting, Julie, that month's hostess, brought out this yummy ice cream dessert.  All the women, including me, raved!  We had to have the recipe.  Julie kind of laughed about that.  It's the easiest thing in the world, and you can change up the flavors any way you like.  I have made this with mint ice cream, pecans, any combination would be good.  For Thanksgiving, I made the original version, Peanut Bar Ice Cream Dessert, one we might call the Buster Bar Dessert if "Buster" wasn't trademarked by Dairy Queen.

Peanut Bar Ice Cream Dessert

40 Oreo cookies, crushed into crumbs

1/4 cup melted butter

1/2 gallon softened vanilla ice cream

15 oz. hot fudge topping

2-3 tablespoons chocolate syrup

8 oz. Cool Whip

1 cup peanuts

Reserve about 2-3 tablespoons of cookie crumbs.  Combine remaining cookie crumbs and melted butter in small bowl.  Press crumb/butter mixture in bottom of a 9x13 inch baking pan and refrigerate for about 15 minutes.

Layer remaining ingredients as follows, spreading each layer as evenly as possible:

Cookie crumbs, ice cream, fudge sauce (fill in bare areas with a little chocolate syrup), nuts, Cool Whip, reserved cookie crumbs (these should not fully cover the Cool Whip)

Freeze several hours until firm.

Note:  You can use any flavor of ice cream you wish and change the nuts as well.  Chopped pecans make a nice change.

Printable recipe