Week Seventeen: Sandwich

Would you believe, I’ve never had an ice cream sandwich? The idea of biting ice cream sends a chill down my spine, I generally prefer to have my ice cream served sundae style in a glass with a spoon. 

In the general context of sandwiches, like most things in history - food or otherwise - the origins are a bit murky, it’s not as easy as saying the Earl of Sandwich invented them. Depending upon how loosely you define a sandwich, the earliest forms of them can be traced to simply meat wrapped in a bread. This got me thinking about ice cream cones and, whilst they’re not ice cream sandwiches, the components are basically there: a biscuit or wafer like casing holding some ice cream.

A bit like sandwiches, early ice cream cones (or cornets) had a mythical origin that is likely not true: the story goes that an ice cream seller at the 1904 world fair ran out of cups and so he asked a waffle seller to fashion him something from a waffle that would hold his ice cream … and thus, the birth of the ice cream cone. Whilst this may (stress on may) have popularised the ice cream cone, they have a history that is about a century longer than that. There were multiple references to ice cream cones throughout the 19th century, and the earliest recipe I could find was in Fancy Ices by Agnes B Marshall, the Victorian Queen of Ices. She is a fascinating subject, and one that I aim to one day give a full account of, but for the purpose of this short paragraph suffice to say she popularised ice cream for everyone not just the very wealthy at confectioners. 

I decided to use her cornet recipe, only instead of shaping them into cones, I’d form ice cream sandwiches from it. Mrs Marshall specifically suggests ginger ‘water ice’ or sorbet, and apple ice cream, to make Margaret Cornets; I didn’t have any better ideas on flavours, but I did decide to return to Gunter’s for the ice cream recipes, plus I decided to make the ginger as an ice cream rather than a sorbet. The apple ice cream was easy, it’s last week's pineapple ice cream but using apple purée rather than pineapple purée; I used Granny Smith apples because they are a variant that would have been available to the Gunter’s confectioners, but really you could use any type of apple you prefer. The ginger ice cream was more fun, and there were two recipes for it, one from Nutt in a cream base and one from Jeanes in a custard base. It’s been a while since I made a custard base ice cream, plus I thought it might be a bit chewier and more suitable for an ice cream sandwich, so I went with that one.

Ginger ice cream

Ingredients

(I made 1000g, but use the percentages to make any amount.)

630.7g single (19% butterfat) cream (63.07%)

49.45g whipping (39% butterfat) cream (4.945%)

52.95g egg yolk (5.295%)

266.9g stem ginger (26.69%)

Method

1. Use a blender to reduce the stem ginger to a purée

2. Put all ingredients in a saucepan, and heat whilst whisking constantly until a custard is formed (when a line can be drawn in the mixture on the back of a spoon)

3. Cool the mixture; for best food safety, use an ice bath to quickly cool to 20C before placing into the refrigerator for several hours, preferably overnight

4. Rewhisk just prior to churning, and strain the ginger purée out

5. Churn according to your ice cream machine’s instructions until at soft serve texture

6. Put it into a container and freeze for at least four hours, preferably overnight

Margaret cornets 

Ingredients

(I made the amount Mrs Marshall’s recipe gives, but unless you want a lot of dough you could make half or even less of it)

226.78g finely ground almonds (39.96%)

113.4g caster sugar (19.98%)

113.4g plain flour, sieved (19.98%)

99.28g egg (17.49%) (unlike for the ice creams, this is yolk and white)

0.96g vanilla extract (0.17%)

13.72g orange flower water (2.42%)

Method

1. Put all ingredients in a bowl and stir until a dough is formed (this will be a sticky dough)

2. Lightly grease a baking tray

3. Press dough onto baking tray, about 3mm thick 

4. Bake at 180C for about 5-7 minutes, the colour should go a very light brown but it won’t colour much

5. Place on a cooling rack; once cooled to touch, cut into shape (I used a round biscuit cutter) and allow to cool fully

To assemble

Place a large spoonful of apple ice cream onto one of the cornet pieces, push down and flatten with a spoon, then place a small spoonful of ginger ice cream on top, push down and flatten. Put a second cornet piece on top and push it down lightly. Use a spoon to smooth the sides.

I won’t pretend I enjoyed this very much. I like the apple ice cream and the ginger ice cream was well done but it’s not a flavour I particularly like, plus it overpowers the apple. The Margaret cornet tastes nice as a biscuit like food, but all combined together it had too many flavours. Plus it involved chewing ice cream. Ice cream sandwiches are unlikely to be repeated by me.