Win-the-Day Ice Cream Sandwiches
One evening not too long ago my adult daughter was home for a weekend visit. We were watching TV when she suddenly exclaimed (with great enthusiasm I might add): “I forgot! At this house you get dessert every night!” While that may not be exactly true (what? Dessert at my house? Nah) … I’ll admit that it’s a rare day when there’s no ice cream in my freezer. I inherited my love of ice cream from my dad. Growing up, the regular for our family of seven was rectangular cartons of store-brand ice cream. In later years, my dad stocked his freezer with a minimum of four half-gallon cartons of Dreyer’s or Umpqua, or whatever was on sale, ice cream in the latest crazy mixtures. I’m more of a purist when it comes to my ice cream. I don’t want more than two things going on inside that tub. My top three: Haagen Dazs Vanilla Swiss Almond, Haagen Dazs Chocolate Chocolate Chip and Tillamook Coffee Almond Fudge. I’m also always up for visiting (even standing in the rain) the local ice cream shop. In college it was Prince Puckler's. When in Portland it’s Salt and Straw and here in Seattle it’s Molly Moon’s. After 30-plus years of living with me, my husband has perfected being my ice cream partner-in-crime. This year his birthday fell on college football Saturday. (Did I mention that the Oregon Ducks won the day beating Ohio State for the first time in history?) Extra points for my homemade ice cream sandwiches. Think super rich and scoopable dark chocolate ice cream (inspired by Molly Moon Melted Chocolate) layered with old fashioned vanilla ice cream sandwiched inside made-from-scratch chocolate cookies with just the right texture.
Neapolitan cookies (times two)
There’s something nostalgic about Neapolitan ice cream. I remember my dad opening up and unfolding the rectangular cartons of the chocolate, vanilla and strawberry ice cream and cutting big slices that consisted of equal portions of each flavor. Neapolitan actually refers to belonging to, or characteristic of Naples, Italy. The associated tri-color may have originally included pistachio (instead of chocolate) to represent the colors of the Italian flag. To this day, there seems to be a debate on the correct order of flavors and the correct order to eat the flavors! When we lived in Arizona, my nanny would buy Neapolitan ice cream sandwiches for the kids. They would methodically eat one flavor at a time. White or vanilla was winter; chocolate or brown was fall; and strawberry or pink was summer. Kids’ imaginations are great. I guess we didn’t have spring in Arizona—winter went straight to summer apparently in their minds! Regardless of which order you prefer the three flavors to appear in your Neapolitan treats, to me, it’s more about the nostalgia than the actual taste. When I saw Neapolitan Cookies #70 in Sarah Kieffer’s 100 Cookies book, I knew I had to make them.