Micro Mud Pie

Mud pie, sometimes know as "Mississippi Mud pie" is a popular restaurant desert, usually consisting of a chocolate cookie crumb crust overflowing with coffee ice cream, topped with caramel, whipped cream, and
nuts. For some reason it usuallly comes in HUGE pieces. It's pretty yummy stuff.

This is a technique for making a smaller version, whose prep time is about a minute. Much easier to make, easier to eat, and easier on your arteries and waistline...

(The picture below of real mud pie is one I found on the web , to give credit where credit is due:
here: http://www.xanga.com/diayeLLOw )

Step 1: Collect Your Ingredients

You need Oreo Cookies (or equivilent), Coffee Ice cream, some sort of caramels or caramel sauce, and (optionally) whipped cream and nuts.

The flavor is largely dependent on the icecream; use your favorite and not just something that was on sale at safeway like I did.

A thicker caramel would be better than the syrup I show here, but also more difficult to do...

Step 2: Assemble the Crust

You normally make a choclate cookie crust for pies by powdering oreos, adding some butter and maybe some other ingredients, pressing in a pan and cooking so it solidifies. The KEY insight leading to this instructable is "Why Bother - you already have something solid that looks a lot like a crust!")

So take out a couple oreos and put them on a plate.

Step 3: Add Ice Cream

Take a scoop of slightly-softened ice cream, mold it like clay into a lump of appropriate size to fit on top of an oreo. Mush it onto the top of an oreo. Repeat for as many micro-mudpies as you're making.

You can probably freeze these at this point if you want to serve a lot at one time later.

Step 4: Add Caramel and Embellishments

If you're using caramel syrup, just drizzle it on. If you're using real caramel, flatten it out and put it on the ice cream like a hat.

Add nuts of your choice (or not) and whipped cream if you want.

And that's it! Your done! Serve them or eat them!