The ice cream sandwich you get inside Betty Ringer’s shop at Sylvan Thirty—with its bright, rainbow-spectrum wall—is black, white, and retro.
Open the silver wrapper, twisted like a party popper. Inside, a rectangle of vanilla ice cream is sandwiched between bookend layers of soft, rich, house-made chocolate brownie that hover between cake and something denser.
It’s right out of your childhood.
Owner Steve Smith has no desire to do crazy flavors, as I’ve written before. A chocolatier by training, with extensive experience in French pastry kitchens, he’s a master at chocolate chip cookies with fleur de sel, too. But these hand-held treats, a showcase for his wares, are are something more recent. You have to watch for them, and snag them when you see them in the case.
In Italy, they have gelato in a brioche bun. In Singapore, they put frozen custard and condensed milk on bread colored tutti-frutti with food coloring. We have brownies that sandwich simple frozen snowiness. No adult flavors. Just pure, innocent bliss.
