I have a childhood memory of sitting at my Great-Aunt Sally and Great-Uncle Chris’s dining room table in Vermont. It was after dinnertime (I don’t recall what was for dinner, though I’m sure it was delicious) and Aunt Sally presented to us a very green, very WOWing pie made of mint ice cream. Now, mint chocolate chip was high on the list of my favorite ice cream flavors at the time, right after coconut almond and black raspberry, and I remember being so fascinated that ice cream could come in pie form. What a revelation.
The last ice cream pie in my summer series threw me right back to that special bright green pie I enjoyed so long ago. May I present to you, Grasshopper Ice Cream Pie.
Last summer, our friends invited us to their home for dinner and I brought over a Creamsicle Ice Cream Pie which was quite enjoyable, if I do say so myself. At some point during that dinner, I casually mentioned that there were many other ice cream pie recipes in my cookbook that I had yet to make, including a mint chocolate chip variety. Well, if you know kids, you know that they can grasp onto information pertinent to their lives and forget it never, and so when these same friends invited us over for dinner again, a very specific request was put in to please bring that mint pie I had previously name-dropped. I was impressed, and flattered. How could I say no?
A few notes on this pie. Ken’s recipe suggests using vanilla ice cream as the base, but to me, the more mint the merrier, so I used an organic mint chocolate chip ice cream. He also suggests using a white crème de menthe but I wanted the pie to resemble the green delight from my childhood in at least some capacity, so I went for the super unnatural-looking green one.
The next layer is a medley of milk and melted marshmallows, combined with crème de menthe and crème de cacao and then beat into heavy cream and powdered sugar. Side note: If anyone knows what to do with a whoppingly huge bottle of crème de menthe minus three tablespoons, I’m open to suggestions.
Green spongy-fluff layer goes over the frozen ice cream base, and the whole thing gets frozen again, until, as Ken puts it, the top layer is “firm but slightly yielding” and/or whenever you’re ready to consume. 
I used sprigs of mint and pieces of a Lake Champlain Dark Chocolate Peppermint Crunch Bar to garnish. Or rather, Micah and Josiah garnished.
You know how mint sprigs are usually used as a garnish in one to two-leaf pieces? Well, the boys were onto something revolutionary here. They decided that they agreed with my sentiment “the more mint, the merrier” and stuck what looked like an entire mint plant in each slice. I loved these “trees” (as Josiah called them) so much, I made the boys pose for several pictures with their handiwork.
Thanks for sharing my love for ice cream pie, Wisniewski family!
