Jaffa Nana Ice Cream Sandwiches

Orange and chocolate was not a flavour combo that I was really familiar with up until recently. In Australia, there are these things called Jaffa Cakes which are essentially orange cake with chocolate icing (there are also Jaffa lollies which are like orange-coated chocolate balls). This seemed weird to me initially, but goodness gracious, they're delicious. They aren't delicious in a childish, easily palatable way like vanilla ice cream. But they're delicious in a more sophisticated, acquired taste way like coffee (except I'm not a giant coffee fan, but you know). 

Anyways, now I'm basically obsessed with chocolate and orange everything. Because another issue I have is with oranges. I really like orange flavoured things (eg. orange juice), but I don't like eating oranges by themselves. You have to peel them which is an effort. And then you get those little white, hard, stringy bits. And the juice goes everywhere. And ugh. So, I've just never gotten to eat my fair share of orange things. Because what do you really put orange in exactly?

I'd bought a bag of mandarins at my local fruit shop (which is amazing because it's like a five minute walk away, the fruits are amazing and ripe and uhghghgg, and it's open late), because impulse fruit buying. Then a few days later I was like "Oh, crap. I have a bag of mandarins....what do I do?" And thus, these ice cream sandwiches were born.

In order to make the ice cream sandwiches (makes 6) you'll need:

for the cookies: 1 cup oats

4 tablespoons chocolate nut butter (I used Mayver's Hazelnut Cacao spread)

3 tablespoons agave

Pulse the oats, agave, and nut butter in your food processor until it starts to stick together. Then divide it in half, and press into some sort of mold to form the cookies (I used cupcake paper thingies, but if you have large cookie cutters or some other mold, that would work as well). Save the other half for the top cookie.

for the nana ice cream: 1 and 1/2 frozen bananas

4 mandarins

Blend up the frozen bananas and mandarins in the food processor. Layer the nana ice cream over the cookies in the molds. Put in the freezer overnight (or until it hardens up a fair bit). Press the remaining half of the cookie "dough" on top of each sandwich. And voila! Jaffa style ice cream sandwiches!