What's Good: Ice Cream Sandwich Edition

I have had some good days playing hooky. An easy top-five entry is the afternoon I spent with a dear friend on a park bench facing the water, eating vanilla ice cream sandwiches, the wax wrappers moving gently in the breeze. In the last summers of the 1800s, some genius in New York City swapped the paper between which street vendors sold ice cream for cake and, later, cookies. To them, I lift my sticky fingers in salute. So rarely does innovation take such elegant form.

Local iterations abound. Mini versions at Jersey Scoops (348 Main St., Loleta) and big fellas with seemingly endless permutations at Living the Dream Ice Cream (1 F St., Eureka) held us in thrall last summer. Here are three more handcrafted ice cream sandwiches — all handcrafted with small batch or local ice cream — worth a nibble on a warm summer day, even if you're not playing hooky.

Ramone's Bakery and Café

There's nothing like scarcity to boost interest. The ubiquitous café is only selling chocolate chip cookie sandwiches from its Old Town location at 209 E St. ($6.50). The nostalgic vanilla is, naturally, made with an old-fashioned wooden ice cream maker — rock salt and all — scooped between the bakery's classic chewy-soft chocolate chunk cookies and rolled in mini chocolate chips that give it a little crunch. Meant as a special for Friday Night Markets, the lucky might score leftovers the following days, but there is talk of them vanishing altogether due to low sales. The same is likely true for the affogato that on a recent visit featured orange chocolate ice cream with a pour of hot espresso ($4.50). Pro-tip: Let the sandwich rest at room temperature a couple minutes (should we start saying "prime" like for cheese?). The affogato, however, you should sip soon but slowly, like the fleeting luxury it is.

Dick Taylor Chocolate

The café at Dick Taylor Chocolate (333 First St., Eureka) is a cool retreat when it gets Humboldt hot (68 degrees and up). The fudge pops have not returned this summer. The natural option for feeding your feelings over this loss is an ice cream cookie sandwich that's taken its place in the freezer ($7.50). The cookie, with its hunks of dark artisanal chocolate, is soft and just lightly baked enough to still impart a cookie dough flavor at its center. Fans of sweet and salty: This is your moment, as the hit of sea salt is bold enough to balance against the house vanilla ice cream. Premade and frozen, it also needs to prime a bit for the ice cream to soften and the full, buttery flavor of the cookie to best come across.

Patches' Pastries Main Street

The tiny house/sweets stand (606 Main St., Ferndale) offers locally made Jersey Scoops ice cream from the Foggy Bottoms Boys Farm in cups, cones and a colossal cookie sandwich that strains the functional definition ($8.50). Choose your flavor and your hand-sized cookies. Crunchy peanut butter cookies with chocolate are a lovely combination, though snickerdoodle is the broadest, which may be of some help, as the pair of cookies will be tasked with four scoops of ice cream before the whole thing is rolled in sprinkles. I'm not going to tell you your business, but this feels like a sharing item. Staff say they've only seen two people take one down solo: a hiker who'd skipped two meals and a 16-year-old boy who called it breakfast. All but the anaconda-jawed must abandon the usual approach and get messy breaking the cookies and scooping. Is it, then, truly an ice cream sandwich? The debate will have to wait — it's freshly scooped, and you need to enter the fray now.

Share your tips about What's Good with Jennifer Fumiko Cahill (she/her), managing editor at the Journal. Reach her at (707) 442-1400 ext. 106, or [email protected] . Follow her on Bluesky @jfumikocahill.bsky.social .

What's Good: Ice Cream Sandwich Edition

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