These Homemade Neapolitan Cookie Ice Cream Sandwiches are an absolutely delicious and indulgent treat, with or without the ice cream! 

They feature a soft and chewy cookie with a trio of flavors:

• A strawberry section reminiscent of strawberry milk
• A classically delicious sugar cookie section
• A chocolate portion that has a hint of an Oreo cookie flavor (if you opt to use black cocoa powder)

To add a fun and aesthetic flair, the cookies are drizzled with white chocolate and sprinkled with strawberry powder. Whether you are looking for a beautiful treat for Mother’s Day or a scrumptious dessert for yourself – I can’t recommend these enough!

Recipe used for the Homemade Neapolitan Cookie Ice Cream Sandwiches:

While the ice cream is store bought, the cookies are from scratch and unlike anything you can buy off the shelf.

Recipe: Neapolitan Cookies by Sarah Kieffer. The recipe can be found on her blog or in her cookbook, 100 Cookies.

This cookbook is one of my absolute favorites for inspiration whether it be for baking ideas or food photography. Sarah is the creator of the famous pan-banging cookie method, which results in chewy and buttery cookies with crispy and wrinkly edges – they’re amazing! Check out my post for pan-banging sugar cookies for an example.

For Sarah’s Neapolitan cookies, I had these saved in a folder on my phone of desserts I absolutely had to bake, based simply on their beautiful and colorful appearance alone. I had no clue they would taste just as good, if not better,  than they look! The cookies are soft, chewy, and each flavor stands its own ground but melds perfectly with the others. 

These are triple threat cookies that have a show-stopping appearance, texture, and flavor!

Tips for making the Neapolitan Cookie Dough:

Make the dough ahead of time:

• While it is well worth the effort, the process of making these cookies is a bit more time consuming than a standard one-flavor sugar cookie. If you make the dough early, you can spend your time the following day assembling and baking!
  • Mix the dough the night before, and wrap each flavor section separately in saran wrap before popping it in the fridge. I like to store it in an air-tight container also for an extra air-wicking measure. 

Use a food scale:

• Using a scale will ensure your cookie dough is even with both the initial sections of dough you flavor as well as the small portions that you use to make the tri-colored dough balls.
  • My large dough sections were 330 grams each and the small sections were 15 grams per the recipe instructions.
• To portion out your dough equally- Weigh your mixing bowl before adding any ingredients and then weigh the bowl after you have finished making the dough. Subtract the bowl weight from the current weight with the dough, and divide by 3! 
• I absolutely love this scale by LEVIN and have found it to be extremely reliable and gives accurate readings. Some I have bought were really out of calibration but this one has been spot-on.

Use black cocoa powder:

• Black cocoa powder is how you can get this gorgeous raven colored hue naturally. 
  • I ordered this one by The Cocoa Trader from Amazon and was very happy with the color and flavor. 
• After reading reviews that black cocoa can be bitter on it’s own, for cautions sake I used one tablespoon black and one tablespoon regular Dutch-processed cocoa. A half and half mixture didn’t dilute the color saturation at all.
• The black cocoa gave this section a bit of an Oreo cookie flavor – SO delicious! 

Add red food coloring to the strawberry section.

• The freeze dried strawberry powder adds a hint of color to the sugar cookie dough base, but a few drops of red food dye boosts the vibrancy up for a beautiful pop of color!
  • To achieve this hue, I used 3 drops of Wilton Color Right in red.

How to assemble the tri-colored Neapolitan cookie dough balls:

Sarah’s blog post explains 3 ways you can assemble the dough. I absolutely loved the more rustic look, which involves adding each color to a cookie scoop.

1. Place a 15 gram dough ball of each flavor cookie dough into a medium cookie scoop.
2. Gently press the dough sections down to meld them together and create a flat surface that fills the scoop to the edges.
   • I was in need of cookie scoops for this since I don’t normally use them, so I picked up this set of three and used the medium one for the dough. It couldn’t have been a more perfect size! I was so relieved the 3 dough balls fit perfectly. The trigger worked well and it left a clean scoop without much dough left behind. 
   • You may find it helpful to wipe down the inside of the scoop between each dough ball assembled.
3. Roll the dough in sugar. After assembling the dough balls, roll each in granulated sugar, or colored sugar that matches the dough.
   • I rolled them entirely in granulated sugar and pressed some black sugar on the matching color sections, and some coarse sparkling sugar on the pink and white portions. I love the added crunch from the coarse sugar! 

How to make the Neapolitan Cookie Ice Cream Sandwiches 

1. Bake your cookies and allow them to fully cool.
2. Drizzle one edge of the cookie with white chocolate.
   • I used Ghirardellhi melting wafers and cut a small tip off of a piping bag to make the drizzle. 
3. Sprinkle the still-wet drizzle with strawberry powder (the same as you used for the dough).
4. Once dry, add a scoop of your favorite flavored ice cream (I opted for vanilla bean) between two of the cookies, and then dig right in!
   • I brought out the large size scoop of the set I ordered for scooping the ice cream. 

If you can, try to assemble these sandwiches close to when you’ll be enjoying them. I found that in the freezer, the ice cream tends to drip down and under the cookies unless you manage to keep the ice cream extremely cold the entire time. Even when this did happen, they still tasted absolutely amazing! 

Neapolitan Ice Cream is a childhood favorite that sparks joy for so many of us. These Homemade Neapolitan Cookie Ice Cream Sandwiches put a twist on the classic with an inside-out version! Now, you get to enjoy vanilla ice cream sandwiched between chocolate, sugar, and strawberry flavored cookies. 

As I’m writing this, I’m still daydreaming about the strawberry section of the cookie. Even my mom (who thought she wouldn’t be a huge fan of the strawberry portion) said she’d love a cookie made entirely from the strawberry dough – I also would not be opposed to this idea! My dad even compared it to strawberry milk. With this feedback, it speaks volumes for just how scrumptious these cookies are. 

Please let me know if you make these! I have a strong feeling you and your loved ones will be ecstatic you did. 

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If you make this dessert or have any questions, please leave a comment below! I absolutely love hearing when others are inspired to step into their kitchen and try out something new.

Happy Baking!

XOXO,