Home › Sandwiches and Canapes › Dessert Sandwich
Dessert Sandwich
Cut sponge cake into thin oblongs or squares. Put between two pieces a slice of vanilla ice cream that has been molded in brick form. Ornament the top slice of cake with whipped cream (sweetened and flavored slightly with cordial) pressed through a pastry tube.-Anne Warner.
A three-part assembly that lives or dies on temperature: the ice cream must be hard and squared off, and the whole thing must go back to the freezer before the cream is piped.
- Brick ice cream"Molded in brick form" refers to ice cream frozen in a rectangular tin so it could be sliced clean. Line a loaf pan with parchment, pack softened ice cream in, level it, and freeze solid overnight; slices then cut square instead of squashing the cake.
- Cut the cake to the brickTrim the sponge oblongs to match the cross-section of the loaf pan before you slice any ice cream. Overhanging cake tears when you press the sandwich together.
- Work fast, then re-freezeAssemble the sandwiches on a chilled tray, put them back in the freezer for at least an hour to firm, and pipe the whipped cream only once they are hard. Cream piped onto a softening sandwich slides off.
- Sponge cake, not butter cakeA plain sponge or génoise stays yieldable when frozen. A rich butter cake sets hard as a board in the freezer and will shatter rather than bite.
- The cordialThe recipe does not specify which. Any sweet liqueur (maraschino, curacao, creme de cacao are period possibilities) will do. Use no more than a teaspoon per cup of cream; alcohol slackens whipped cream and too much will keep it from holding a piped line.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities. A loaf-shaped brick cut into slices about an inch thick will make eight to ten sandwiches. Serve straight from the freezer.
The frozen cake-and-ice-cream sandwich belongs to the era of the brick mold, when ice cream was packed into rectangular tins so it could be sliced into neat portions -- an arrangement that also let a cook layer two or three flavors in one brick, the form known as Neapolitan. Placing such a slice between cake and calling the result a sandwich reflects how loosely the word was used in American cookbooks around the turn of the twentieth century, where sandwich chapters could cover savory canapes and sweets alike, the only real requirement being something held between two flat pieces. The recipe is credited to a named contributor, Anne Warner.