Nigella Eats Everything

Ice cream never struck me as a satisfying dessert – it’s the snack you eat in a cone by the beach, not the exclamation mark to end a meal. (If you disagree, I will see you outside aka the comments section.) But, let me just clarify. The act of squishing said ice cream between two layers of something sweet, be it two cookies, a brioche roll, a pain au chocolat, not only vastly increases my risk of diabetes and tooth decay, but it makes me abandon all my opinions and judgements on ice cream, and run into the open arms of ice cream sandwiches – an icy dessert of substance.

To go back to ice cream itself – first, I hope I didn’t offend anyone (just don’t get me started on the subject of arctic roll, I don’t want anyone to angrily unsubscribe in protest). Second, skating into safer territory, I’m sure many would agree that homemade ice cream is far superior to all shop-bought options.

The vanilla ice cream in my freezer is the second cheapest tub available at my nearby supermarket. I assessed the 1 euro difference in price between that and the bottom-of-the-barrel cheapest, and made what I thought at the time was the wise decision to spend a grand total of 2 euros 30 and ideally preserve my insides. Little did I know what I was carrying. This ice cream is toxic – if you can imagine artificial vanilla flavour and intensify it by 1000 then we’re in the ball park of this ice cream’s flavour. I’m now terribly curious to try the 1 euro stuff.

Ice cream has a time and a place. On the beach, as stated above. Or in Rome where you’re served by waiters wearing bow ties and you need to get two flavours in one cone because you must try all of the city’s gelato during one holiday. It was in fact on that trip when I tried an Italian ice cream sandwich for the first time, the pinnacle of ice cream luxury.

In one of the many cool, highly polished gelaterias in Rome stood a glass plinth of brioche buns. I immediately knew I was destined to sample one stuffed with ice cream, and that I did. Full of pistachio, caramel and chocolate gelato, and a flimsy spoon wedged in there too, the brioche soaked up the melting ice cream, the flavours melding in a delicious childlike mess. The spoon became redundant as I needed this sandwich and I needed it quickly – the only option was to lift it to my mouth like it was a meal deal I ate on my lunch break. It was all over in five minutes. And like all holiday romances, I never forgot it.

Now I live in France, and while brioche is a winning bready vehicle here too, personally I think a pain au chocolat ice cream sandwich is a better option.

How to Sandwich an Ice Cream Sandwich

When it comes to savoury sandwiches (I guess we can categorise them as ‘sandwiches’), the usual exterior wrapping is bread. I have just googled ‘sandwiches without bread’ and the alternatives are strange, I’d expected to at least have heard of some of these options but nope, can’t say I’ve come across sandwiching a filling with aubergine slices, hollowed-out cucumber halves, or miniature omelettes. So let’s just say, for argument’s sake, the default is bread.

The sweet sandwich though, why, there’s a whole realm, a whole Narnia of different sandwiching options. Brioche and sandwich bread we’ve covered, but there’s obviously cookies and wafers too, and also brownies and blondies, but what about the whole industry of breakfast foods: French toast, waffles, a croissant or pain au chocolat?

Quite frankly, we are spoilt for choice when it comes to our ice cream sandwich vehicles.

Here, I’ve gone for the traditional cookie ice cream sandwich. Not only is the structural integrity sound, but there is an intriguing balance of textures combined with the silky soft ice cream gently melting in the middle. The cookies are firm, yet soft and chewy enough to not become a choking hazard. Plus, you think the sweet-sandwich world is big, the cookie possesses a whole galaxy. The choices are almost overwhelmingly endless, but I settled for oaty chocolate chunk cookies.

Oatmeal cookies are a firm favourite because of their warm molassey flavour, their addictive chew, their hearty robustness. For a cookie, they’re pretty sturdy, the kind of cookie you’d want as a bouncer. They’re not going to dissolve into a pile of soggy crumbs as soon as the ice cream starts melting.

And as for the pain au chocolat ice cream sandwich… well it’s got to be done hasn’t it? Much like the chocolate chunk cookie, it’s got that obligatory chocolate in there. And I love me some soggy pastry, I won’t lie to you, and ice cream gently melting inside a buttery pain au chocolat does things to me.

The Ice Cream Sandwich Filling

My internal teenager is rolling her eyes at me right now. ‘The ice cream sandwich filling is ice cream. Duh.’

But the problem with my internal teenager is that she is a pedantic pain in the ass, and doesn’t care as much about flavour as I do. Yes, there’s ice cream, but what kind of ice cream are we talking about here? Please don’t say the vanilla ice cream in my freezer.

While I would always advise we make our own ice cream, I know we all have enough on our plates as it is. This is just an ice cream sandwich after all, not Bake Off. So, how can we improve cheap crappy ice cream to make a cheat’s ice cream sandwich?

I have two options for you.

First, let’s ripple in some berries. Compotes and coulis are tart, fruity solutions to improve a bad batch of ice cream. Or curd. I had some mixed berry curd in my fridge, so I whacked that in with some frozen berries, swirling it through for little bursts of berry tang.

Second, let’s say your ice cream is perfectly acceptable. In that case, why not build a banoffee ice cream sandwich? Vanilla ice cream sandwiched with salted caramel sauce and sliced banana, all oozy and drippy between two cookies?

So, after all, it doesn’t take a lot for ice cream to have its Cinderella moment – to transform from the dud of the dessert menu to be dressed up in time for the ball. The ball being our summer sugar cravings that is.