Make Homemade Ice Cream Sandwiches Unforgettable With A Toasted Twist

When your regular bowl of ice cream doesn't cut it anymore, reach for an ice cream sandwich instead. Besides the flavorful, soft, and sweet ice cream, you'll also get a bite of the tasty base that's holding the entire treat together. When it comes to ice cream sandwich bases, you'll have your usual suspects — chocolate chip cookies, Italian pizzelles, brownies, and more. But, there's a tastier, carby alternative out there that's also worth trying: a toasted bagel.

The dense, bready rounds have all of the structural stability you need to assemble your sandwich. Plus, when you give your store-bought bagel a quick toast beforehand, you'll unlock even more opportunities for a flavorful and slightly-charred bite. The key is to make sure that both of your bagel slices are toasted enough to be crunchy, but also cool enough that they won't melt the ice cream the second you start constructing your sandwich. You can also make assembly easier by shaping and freezing ice cream into appropriately sized rounds beforehand. That way, you'll only need to transfer the frozen puck to the inside of the bagel.

There are a ton of different flavor pairings for your elevated ice cream sandwich. Ideally, you'll want to stick to the basic and sweet-leaning bagel flavors, like plain, salt, blueberry, or French toast, because this will give you more opportunities for complementary ice cream pairings. Plain or salt bagels will go well with an array of ice cream flavors, but we'd recommend trying a salted caramel ice cream with a salt bagel to highlight some of those savory notes. If you can get your hands on a chocolate chip bagel, you'll open up an array of possibilities for chocolate-adjacent ice cream flavors, including peanut butter cup, chocolate chip cookie dough, and more.

If you want to elevate you sandwich even more, you may also want to consider adding your favorite spread to the bagel before you sandwich in your ice cream. Despite being in bagel town, don't feel compelled to stick to cream cheese. Instead, add a schmear of peanut butter, Nutella, or fruit jam to alter the mouthfeel and impart even more flavor complexity.