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Ice-Cream Sandwiches
Devil's food, angel cake, sponge cake, butter cake, or éclair or -puff cream shells may be the foundation of many a delicious icecream sandwich. Between thin slices of any of the cakes, or between halves of pastry shells, place a serving of ice-cream of a flavor to blend well with the cake. Brick ice-cream, of course, is the easiest to cut. Cover with chocolate, butterscotch, marshmallow, or fruit sauce, either hot or cold, and top with nuts of various kinds, coconut, or pieces of fresh or canned fruit.
For example, between thin slices of gold or white cake place a serving of vanilla ice-cream and three or four tablespoons of crushed fresh strawberries. Over the whole pour plain marshmallow sauce or whipped cream and garnish with several tablespoons of crushed strawberries. Fill a cream-puff shell with peach icecream and pour over it a peach sirup, topped with whipped cream.
Chocolate or vanilla ice-cream placed between layers of white cake or angel food is delicious covered with a thick fudge sauce.
This is a formula rather than a fixed recipe — a template for assembling cake, ice-cream and sauce. A few of its assumptions belong to the 1920s freezer counter and need translating.
- Brick ice-creamIce-cream was sold moulded in rectangular "bricks," which sliced into neat slabs. The modern equivalent is to freeze ice-cream hard in a loaf pan lined with parchment, then lift it out and cut across into slabs.
- Cut cake thin, but not too thin"Thin slices" is not defined; something around half an inch works. Angel and sponge cake compress under a firm slab of ice-cream; butter cake and devil's food hold up better but harden in the freezer if the sandwiches are stored.
- Temper before slicingIce-cream cuts most cleanly when hard but not brittle. Dip the knife in hot water and wipe it between cuts. Assemble, then return the sandwiches to the freezer before saucing.
- Cream shells are for immediate serviceCream shells are best served promptly -- Éclair and cream-puff shells soften once they meet ice-cream and syrup, so fill and sauce them shortly before serving.
- Gold cakeA yolk-rich butter cake, the counterpart to white cake made with whites only. Any plain yellow butter cake stands in.
- Marshmallow sauceIn this period made by melting marshmallows with a little hot water or syrup, sometimes lightened with beaten egg white. Commercial marshmallow creme thinned with hot cream gives the same effect.
- "Sirup"The period spelling of syrup. The peach sirup is unspecified: either the liquid drained from canned peaches, reduced a little, or a syrup cooked with fresh fruit.
- Quantities and yieldBeyond the three or four tablespoons of crushed strawberries and the 'several tablespoons' of garnish, the book gives no measurements and no yield. As a rough working guide, reckon on two cake slices, a scant half cup of ice-cream and a couple of tablespoons of sauce per sandwich.
Ice-cream sandwiches were street food before they were a dessert course: pushcart vendors in New York and other eastern cities are generally traced to accounts of around 1899-1900 selling ice-cream pressed between wafers, reportedly for as little as a penny apiece. What this Butterick page does is domesticate the idea — swapping the vendor's plain wafer for angel food, devil's food or a cream-puff shell, and burying it under sauce, whipped cream and fruit until it becomes a sit-down dish. The instructions concern themselves with slicing and garnishing rather than freezing, and offer a template with examples instead of a single fixed recipe.