Peanut Butter and Fudge Ice Cream Squares

This is another yummy dessert, but after making and serving this one I have decided that I must be lacking in the skill required to cleanly cut desserts in general!  Seems like they never look as good as they taste, based on how messy it is to cut and serve them!  Never the less, this one is easy enough and good enough I will most likely be making it again in the future.

It is fairly basic, especially if you go the route that I did and bought my hot fudge and used a tub of Cool Whip instead of whipping up some fresh whipping cream.
Start by crushing your cookies, mixing those with the melted butter.  Whenever I am making this type of crust I always mix it up in the pan itself, saves me at least one dirty dish!

Press that into the bottom of the pan.  The crust will need to be put in the freezer for about an hour to get hard.  If you skip this step than it is harder to spread your ice cream while having the crust stay put.  You can reduce it down to 30 minutes if need be.  Plan on pulling your ice cream out to have it soften for about 30  minutes, makes for easier spreading.  Once the ice cream is spread on the crust (forgot to take a picture of that, please forgive me!).  Now this next step, don't shorten it!  Put the dessert back in the freezer for at least an hour.  You will need the ice cream to harden up so when you spread or pour the fudge topping the ice cream is firm enough so the fudge doesn't sink, like it did in mine!

Instead of a nice fudge layer, I ended up with this!  Now I believe every piece had a good amount of fudge and everyone said how yummy it was, but still!  I used a store bought variety and had warmed it up for spreading so the heat just cut right through my semi-soft ice cream!  Put it back in the freezer, another 30 minutes or so.  Next comes the Cool Whip layer followed by the chopped up peanut butter cups. 

Store in freezer until about 10 minutes before you want to serve it.  Hopefully you will have better luck getting pretty little pieces out of your dish!

Enjoy!

Peanut Butter and Fudge Ice Cream Squares

Ingredients
12-14 Nutter Butter cookies, crushed
3 1/2 Tbls butter, melted
1 carton vanilla ice cream
1 jar of hot fudge topping
1 8oz tub of Cool Whip
20 small peanut butter cups roughly chopped

Directions
1. Mix crushed cookies and melted butter in 8x8 square baking pan.  Put in freezer for 30-60 minutes to harden.  30 minutes before you need the ice cream have it sitting out on your counter to get soft.
2. Spread softened ice cream onto crust layer, be careful that crust doesn't pull up when spreading.  Put back into freezer for at least an hour.  The ice cream needs to be frozen.
3. Shortly before pulling the dessert out of the freezer start warming up the fudge sauce.  Since you will be using the entire jar, transfer to a larger bowl so it will heat faster, make sure it isn't super hot.  Carefully pour the fudge onto the ice cream layer and try to create a solid fudge layer.  Freeze again for 30 minutes.
4. Spread the Cool Whip on top and then sprinkle with chopped peanut butter cups.  Freeze until you are ready to serve.
5. Let sit out for about 10 minutes before cutting into squares.

This recipe was originally designed to make a 9x13 pan and was found here: http://lovelylittlekitchen.com/peanut-butter-cup-ice-cream-dessert/