Any ‘Wich Way

Any ‘Wich Way

y list of what is and is not a sandwich is ironclad (see: ‘Wich Is It? on page 39). Some of you, I know, read it, your knuckles turning white as you squeezed this copy of Rouses Magazine in your hands. “A po-boy is not a sandwich?!” you raged to the heavens like King Lear.

Even the other writers and the editor of this magazine were outraged at me, though how someone would think a hot dog is a sandwich is beyond me. (It’s a burrito — which, I know, also annoyed you.)

Dear reader, I am willing to admit when I am wrong, and if ever I am, I will do so. But that has not happened yet. Still, in hopes of keeping my job, I have decided to offer a small concession, with an asterisk the size of a supernova: the “novelty dessert sandwich.”

I assert up front that this is not a subset of sandwich (as these are not sandwiches) but rather, a novelty appropriation of the word “sandwich,” culturally accepted because our language is ever evolving (which I also do not like, but that’s a discussion for another day).

In short, I am trying to reduce the amount of hate mail I get this month, though I encourage you to write anyway, because I’m always looking for reading material to help me fall asleep at night. So here goes.

As stated in my other piece, an ice cream sandwich is neither a communal food, nor does it use sliced bread (which is basically the main rule of being a sandwich), but this made a lot of (mistaken) people very angry — people don’t like to be wrong — and so I have moved it into to the “novelty dessert sandwich” category, which I must again state is not a subset of “sandwich,” but rather, a different thing entirely that just happens to use the same word. I will not yield on this. Grab your pitchforks and storm my house and still I will shout at you from my porch how wrong you are, even as you erect a witch-burning pyre and prepare to cleanse my soul.

I grant you that an ice cream sandwich involves a filling between two baked goods — in this case, soft, flat, chocolatey cookies — and they are delicious (like actual sandwiches). Congratulations, ice cream sandwich. You make the novelty sandwich cut. Namaste.

Oreos bills themselves as “supremely dunkable,” cookies that “sandwich a rich creme filling between the bold taste of two chocolate wafers — making them milk’s favorite cookie.” Note that they don’t exactly claim the domain of sandwichdom

but rather, use sandwich as a verb. (I cannot argue with anything else in their description. Oreos are a great, gluten-free, vegan snack.) Because of their honesty, flavor and fun, I hereby grant them novelty dessert sandwich status.

Note that macarons and Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies also fit this description, and are thus novelty dessert sandwiches as well. Macarons are colorful Oreos that went to college. Little Debbies…well, after high school they decided to take a gap year to find themselves. It’s just been a very long gap so far. They’re still delicious, though.

The main difference between an ice cream sandwich and a cookie sandwich is that cookie sandwiches use chocolate chip cookies as their ersatz slices of bread. Filled usually with vanilla ice cream, and rolled on the sides with chocolate chips, they are just too good to ignore, and on a long-enough timeline I suspect they will overtake ice cream sandwiches as the frozen novelty dessert sandwich of choice.

If you want to create a glorious cookie sandwich at home, here is a short recipe you can prepare yourself that will make your kids go wild (possibly from a sugar rush, but also from joy).

First, make chocolate chip cookie dough, or buy a tube of pre-made from your local Rouses. Next, line a square baking pan with parchment paper. Add the raw cookie dough to the pan, pressing it out to meet all sides. When you are done, it should be smooth and flat. Throw the pan in the freezer. Now, get some ice cream from Rouses, and leave it out until it softens (not until it’s ice cream soup — which is, I assert, a soup — but until you can spread it easily). Take the baking pan from the freezer, and spread the ice cream across the top of the cookie dough layer. You want it to be about

1.5 inches thick. Stick the whole thing back in the freezer to harden. Once it is firm, again pull the pan from the freezer and spread one final edge-to-edge layer of cookie dough atop the ice cream. Return it to the freezer and let it freeze for several hours. When dessert time comes along, slice your frozen goodie into squares, and to remove them from the baking pan without breaking them, lift gently with the parchment paper and take each in hand gently. It will be the best cookie sandwich you have ever had.

S’mores are like the funky best friend of Oreos. They have great fashion sense, know all the coolest music, and are the life of the party. (They can also be a little needy.) Additionally, they are the only novelty dessert sandwich in this piece that

requires fire and coat hangers to create, and whose filling can range from slightly gooey all the way to charcoal. Two graham crackers, a Hershey’s chocolate bar and marshmallows: Who would have guessed that they would join together to light up every pleasure center of the human brain?

Of all the novelty dessert sandwiches on the list, MoonPies are the only ones with a wicked cool Twitter presence. (A couple of favorite tweets of theirs: “Nothing quite like finding the great taste of MoonPie® in a place where you least expect it like under your pillow or in the back of a police car.” Or when a Twitter user named Kaela tweeted, “They should call you MoonBye because nobody likes you,” to which MoonPie responded: “They should call you Kayla because that’s how it’s supposed to be spelled.”

What is so beautiful about MoonPies is not only the perfectly balanced cookiemarshmallow-cookie novelty dessert sandwich structure, but that the whole thing is shrouded in chocolate, and is thus a perfect physical manifestation of joy.

In summation, novelty dessert sandwiches are sandwiches in the way that an ice cream cone is a sweet, open-ended burrito, or that a pita is just a taco with a fluffy shell and different seasonings. And yet, the people have spoken. Enjoy your novelty dessert sandwiches, dear Rouses readers. Tell yourselves that, yes, your Oreo is a sandwich. You know the truth in your heart; but in hard years, sometimes a little delusion is just what the doctor ordered. And if you can find a doctor who prescribes Oreos, keep them.