For Spunkier Ice Cream Sandwiches, Say “See Ya!” Cookies

Ice cream sandwiches needn't be limited to cookies and vanilla, so we partnered with Wolf Gourmet to show you a few ways to play around with "bread" and ice cream options (including actual bread, with any flavor of ice cream you like).

One summer, my first in Brooklyn, I lived on what seemed to be a major ice cream truck thoroughfare. All day, every day, without fail or reprieve, the trucks would drive by beneath my windows blasting “Pop Goes the Weasel” and “The Entertainer” and “Turkey in the Straw.” This could be enough to ruin ice cream for a person forever, but it didn’t, and my heart still jumped up, at least the first 100 times the truck jingled by. Just the other day, I saw a pack of kids out with their teachers chase down an ice cream truck, and what did the teachers do? Flag the truck and line the kids up so they could treat everyone to Mister Softee cones, and Spongebob Squarepants ice pops with gumball eyes, and ice cream sandwiches. The surprise and the delight of ice cream trucks is, I think, universal and inexhaustible.

Ice cream truck options, while good, are not nearly as good as something you could make yourself—and besides, the options have been more or less the same for my entire ice cream truck-hailing lifetime. And if an ice cream sandwich is what’s calling to you, you’ve got two options: the admittedly very tasty Chipwich (two enormous chocolate chip cookies with a scoop of vanilla between them) and the old-school rectangular one, with soft chocolate cookies (really more cakey than anything else) sandwiching a vanilla ice cream that melts faster than you’d think possible.

This does not leave a lot of options for the adventurous at heart.

But back in your own kitchen, you have more freedom: Toss the vanilla to the curb and use any kind of ice cream or sorbet or sherbet or what-have-you that you want—whatever brand you want! Or, overachiever that you may be, make your own.

The real fun begins when it comes time for picking the sandwich. No one would fault you for sticking to cookies (and there are so many options there—thin, crispy gingersnaps! sugar-sparkled molasses cookies! snickerdoodles! white chocolate-macadamias!), but before you know it, you’ll start to see the potential for ice cream sandwiching in everything: brownies or blondies, toasted bread (like brioche or focaccia), Rice Krispie treats.

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Rhubarb Semifreddo Ice Cream Sandwiches

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Now imagine being the lucky neighbor or friend or mail-person to drop by your kitchen and out of nowhere be offered one of these beauties. Surprise! Delight! It’s all the ice cream truck can aspire to, and you’ve done it, and you didn’t even need to whistle “Turkey in the Straw.” (And thank goodness for that.)

Wolf Gourmet's countertop appliances and kitchen tools, like their high-performance blender, countertop oven, roomy toaster, and 10-piece cookware set, make precision look easy—read more about their products here.