“Give way to your worst impulse.”

“This is going to be an interesting day,” she muses, followed by, “what IS my worst impulse, anyway?”  She’s acted on a few impulses lately, primarily bad ones, in retrospect.  She’s uneasy imagining where her absolute worst could push her.

Created by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt in 1975, Oblique Strategies is a technique for cultivating seeds of innovative creativity.  Originally in the form of printed cards, each strategy, like “Give way to your worst impulse,” offers a challenging constraint intended to help artists (particularly musicians) penetrate creative blocks. The cards contain a suggestion, aphorism, or remark which can be used to break dilemmas in creativity. Some are specific to music composition; others are more general, but all can be used to break through any creative dilemma. The cards are now available on an app which she recently downloaded. Strategies include:

• Disciplined self-indulgence
• Make a blank valuable by putting it in an exquisite frame
• Go slowly all the way round the outside
• What are you really thinking about just now? Incorporate

Forever struggling with her elusive impetus to write, she is on a continuous lookout for tools to ease her tortured (or non-existent) process.   Downloading the strategies onto her phone, she concluded, in addition to helping her write, would make a great tool for breaking through her quotidian life blocks as well. And so begins her dilemma on surviving a day when her directive is to give way to her worst impulse. 

She would have preferred, “Imagine the art as a set of disconnected events.”  Disconnected – yes – like this introduction and the recipe below.  That’s something she’s extremely familiar with.

Classic Ice Cream Sandwiches

• Servings: 9 Sandwiches
• Print

Classic chewy oatmeal cookies bookend rounds of vanilla ice cream rolled in mini-chips.

Ingredients

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• ¾ teaspoon salt
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• 4 Tablespoons unsalted butter
• ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• ¾ cup brown sugar
• ½ cup sugar
• ½ cup vegetable oil
• 1 large egg plus 1 large egg yolk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
• 1 ½ quarts ice cream in a square tub, such as Breyers
• ½ cup mini chocolate chips

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375⁰ F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment or Silpat liners. Whisk together flour, salt and baking soda; set aside.
2. Brown butter by melting in a small skillet over medium-high heat, stirring and scraping bottom of pan until milk solids are dark golden and butter has a nutty aroma. Stir in cinnamon.
3. In a large bowl, combine cinnamon butter, sugars, and oil and whisk to combine. Add egg, yolk, and vanilla and whisk until mixture is smooth. Using a wooden spoon, stir in flour mixture until combined. Add oats and stir until evenly distributed.
4. Divide dough into 18 portions (I use a small ice cream scoop). Arrange dough balls 2” apart on prepared sheets. Using damp hands, press each ball into a 2 ½-inch disk.
5. Bake 8-10 minutes until cookie edges are set and centers are still soft, but not wet. Let cookies set on sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
6. Cut cardboard from ice cream and slice into 1” thick slices. Using a 3 ½-inch cookie cutter, cut 2 rounds from each slice, 9 slices total. Sandwich ice cream between two cookies, and roll in mini chocolate chips. Freeze until ready to serve.

*Adapted from Cook’s Illustrated Classic Chewy Oatmeal Cookies