Chocolate Parsnip Ice Cream Sandwich Muffins

Makes approximately 20-30 medium ice cream sandwiches.

Ingredients:

¾ cup of special dark unsweetened baking cocoa
2 cups organic unbleached white flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
⅔ cup organic cane sugar
½ cup organic brown sugar, packed
¼ teaspoon finely ground sea salt
1½ cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
3 large organic cage-free eggs
⅔ cup low fat organic vanilla yogurt
1 cup organic whole milk
2 small parsnips
½ cup sunflower oil
1 tablespoon organic flaxseed oil
1.5-quart container of Neapolitan ice cream
Raspberry jam (optional)
Fun shaped cookie cutters (sharp metal works best)

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350F.
2. Grease a 9x9 baking pan
3. In a large mixing bowl, sift dry ingredients together: cocoa, flour, baking powder, baking soda, cane sugar, brown sugar and salt.
4. Put the chocolate chips into a food processor until they’re a crumbly powder. Add to the dry ingredients.
5. Rinse, peel and chop the parsnips into small 1” chunks.
6. Boil them in water until they’re soft.
7. In the meantime, whisk the eggs. Add the yogurt and milk, one at a time, and whisk until creamy
8. When the parsnips are cooked, purée them in a food processor with the sunflower oil and the flax-seed oil until they are the consistency of oatmeal.
9. Add the parsnip purée to the liquid ingredients (it will be about ⅔ of a cup of purée), and whisk until well blended.
10. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients.
11. Pour the liquid ingredients into the center of the well.
12. Blend the wet and dry ingredients together gently until the batter is moist. Don’t over mix it.
13. With a soft spatula, spread ½” of batter on the bottom of the pan.
14. Bake for 14 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.
15. Cool the muffin for a few minutes in the pan, then tip the pan upside down over a cutting board, gently removing the square of muffin (this works best if you place the cutting board on top of the pan, then flip them over together.
16. Let it finish cooling on the cutting board.
17. Grease the cookie cutters, knife or top of a drinking glass (for circular shapes).
18. When the muffin square has cooled, cut shapes out of it with the cookie cutters (or cut them into squares with a sharp knife) and place them on a cookie sheet lined with waxed paper.
19. Spread top of muffin shape with jam (optional). On the top of another piece of muffin that is a similar shape, spread some ice cream. Put them together as a sandwich and serve immediately or put ice cream sandwiches back into the freezer on the cookie pan until ready to eat (hold them together with a toothpick if necessary). If you don’t plan to eat them in a few hours, once they have chilled and the ice cream solidified, wrap each ice cream sandwich individually with plastic wrap and return to the freezer.

TIP: an alternative to baking the muffin batter in a square pan and using cookie cutters to make the ice cream sandwiches is to bake the batter in a muffin pan (like traditional muffins), let the muffins cool, cut them in half (through the middle), put ice cream on top of the bottom half, and put the top back on top of the ice cream to make a muffin ice cream sandwich.