Bredenbecks is hitting the hot summer ground running with ice cream sandwiches—a customer’s favorite ice cream flavor spread between two delicious cookies. At this bakery-slash-ice-cream-parlor in Philadelphia, the sandwiches are made on chocolate chip or oatmeal raisin cookies, and vanilla is the ice cream center of choice.

Owner Karen Boyd offers tips on creating the perfect ice cream sandwich:


1. Be sure you start with a nice cold cookie (keep finished cookies ready in the freezer) 
2. Apply a generous amount of ice cream between the cookies
3. Cover and freeze (the sandwiches have a long frozen shelf-life)
4. Use small batches and create them often.

Some fun ways to decorate ice cream sandwiches include rolling them in Oreo crumbs, chocolate “jimmies” or almond crunch. For Memorial Day, Bredenbeck’s used red, white and blue jimmies to celebrate the holiday.

Be sure that your sizes are appropriate to your customer base. Initially, Bredenbeck’s only offered one size of the ice cream sandwich, which was about 1.5 oz. But this large size seemed to just appeal to mostly men and teenagers. They now offer a smaller size—about a third of the original—that caters to women and kids. The new size has created a whole new market for this chilly treat.

Bredenbeck’s ice cream sandwiches:

“Big As Your Face” — $4.95
“Itsy Bitsy” — $2.50