Ice Cream Cookie Cups

I'm an engineer by education and so I'm a stickler for efficiency.  As such, I'm a big fan of meals with edible containers.  Sandwiches, calzones, burritos, and chili in a bread bowl all strike a chord deep within my fussy engineering psyche.  In the words of George Steinbrenner (aka, Larry David): "From 1973 to 1982 I ate the exact same lunch every day: turkey chili in a bowl made out of bread. Bread bowl, George. You'd eat the chili, then you'd eat the bowl. Nothing more satisfying than looking down after lunch and just seeing a table."

Thus, I was completely bowled over when I saw this idea on The Daily Buzz.  The idea had all the hallmarks of brilliance (simple, repeatable, obvious in retrospect, and delicious) and I am still amazed that it took me almost 32 years to come across it.

The process is remarkably simple: flip over your muffin tray and grease the outside of it (yeah, you read that right). Then mound the cookie dough over the bumps.  Bake for ~10 minutes at 350F until the dough sets and pop your cookie cups off to cool.

As the cookies bake, the dough will flow down and around the bumps on the muffin tin.  Thus, it's a good idea to use a cookie dough that doesn't spread out too much as it will just flow off the mold and pool at the bottom.  T-Moo's oatmeal chocolate chip dough is ideal.

You can fill these with just about anything you want but I used vanilla ice cream and steeped strawberries, topped with a strawberry rosewater coulis because I really wanted to cook something with rosewater in it!

Coulis:
1 cup diced strawberries
2 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp rose water
1/2 cup water
1 tsp butter

Saute the berries in the butter for 1 minute, add the rest of the ingredients and simmer until reduced by half.  Blend with an immersion blender or actual blender and strain over dessert.

Steeped berries:
1 cup strawberries, quartered
1/2 tbsp sweet balsamic vinegar
1 tsp sugar

Toss to coat and reserve for 30-minutes to an hour in the fridge.