By July. The summer is in full swing and the pre-publication buzz for Two Kitchens is building. The larger press means: a larger marketing budget, more advance copies to reviewers, more potential interviews, the possibility (actual this time, not theoretical) of a national book tour. The words "national book tour" still feel foreign in my mouth, the mouth of a woman who made miso soup at three AM in her pajamas and is now contemplating flights to New York and Chicago and San Francisco and the specific anxiety of standing in bookstores in cities she has never visited, reading words she wrote in a kitchen in Portland, to people she has never met, about a grandmother they will never know.
I made hiyashi chuka — the annual July cold ramen — and the blog post was the twelfth annual post, the tradition that the readers expect, the tick of the summer clock. "The Same Noodles, Year Twelve." The post was the same and different, the way every annual post is, the way every annual anything is: the ritual unchanged, the woman changed, the noodles unchanged, the life changed. Twelve years. Twelve summers. Twelve cold ramen posts. The accumulation is the career. The career is the accumulation.
Miya's summer cooking project this year: she is teaching ME. The reversal is complete. She chose the menu: dishes she has learned from sources other than me — from YouTube, from Japanese cooking channels, from the library books she devours. This week she taught me to make okonomiyaki — the Japanese savory pancake — from a recipe she found online and adapted with her own modifications (extra cabbage, miso in the batter — the miso is her signature now, the way the miso was Fumiko's signature, the ingredient that makes everything deeper). The okonomiyaki was: excellent. The teaching was: confident. The reversal was: complete.
The okonomiyaki was still warm on the cutting board and Miya was already eyeing dessert — the teacher’s prerogative, apparently, now that she’d claimed the role. July in Portland means the kitchen stays hot long after the burners go off, and something cold felt not just right but necessary, the kind of punctuation a summer evening demands. This ice cream pie has become our after-lesson tradition: big, unapologetically sweet, cold all the way through — the exact opposite of the careful, layered work that came before it, and exactly what a milestone summer calls for.
Ultimate Snickers Ice Cream Pie
Prep Time: 20 minutes | Cook Time: 0 minutes | Total Time: 4 hours 20 minutes (includes freezing) | Servings: 10
Ingredients
- 1 pre-made Oreo cookie pie crust (9-inch)
- 1/2 cup hot fudge sauce, divided
- 1/2 cup caramel sauce, divided
- 4 full-size Snickers bars, chopped, divided
- 1.5 quarts vanilla ice cream, softened slightly
- 1 cup salted dry-roasted peanuts
- Whipped cream, for serving
Instructions
- Build the base layer. Drizzle 1/4 cup hot fudge sauce and 1/4 cup caramel sauce over the bottom of the Oreo crust. Scatter half the chopped Snickers bars evenly over the sauces.
- Add the ice cream. Spoon the softened vanilla ice cream over the Snickers layer, spreading it gently and evenly with a spatula to fill the crust completely. Smooth the top.
- Top and finish. Drizzle the remaining 1/4 cup hot fudge and 1/4 cup caramel sauce over the ice cream. Scatter the remaining Snickers pieces and all of the peanuts across the top.
- Freeze until firm. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and freeze for at least 4 hours, or overnight, until the pie is completely solid and slices cleanly.
- Serve. Remove from the freezer 5 minutes before slicing. Cut into wedges and top each slice with a dollop of whipped cream. Serve immediately.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 520 | Protein: 8g | Fat: 26g | Carbs: 67g | Fiber: 2g | Sodium: 310mg