These $10 Ice Cream Sandwiches Are the Cool Treats I Wish I Had When I Was a Kid

To me, there’s no better time of year than the summer. Sure it’s hot, but you’ve got the pool, long afternoons listening to baseball on the radio, and a backyard full of fireflies. And then there’s the food — hot dogs on the grill, big chunks of watermelon sprinkled with salt, and a cooler full of ice cream sandwiches at the park. I’m an ice cream sandwich devotee, and this year I’m stocking my cooler with a Michigan-based brand I stumbled upon on a recent trip to Wegmans: Cool Jacks.

Cool Jacks was founded in 2011 by entrepreneur Josh Charlip. The idea was to conjure the nostalgia for childhood summers by combining two simple things: cookies and ice cream. And together in Cool Jacks’ ice cream sandwiches, these two elements surpass the sum of their parts to do just that. 

At a little over $10 for four ice cream sandwiches, Cool Jacks is a bit of a splurge, but the massive size of the sandwiches and the premium ingredients within add up to offset the cost. These aren’t wimpy ice cream sandwiches that melt after a minute in the sun. These are sturdy masterpieces in fun flavors — a special treat meant to be savored. I like to let mine come up to temperature for a minute or two before eating them so I can fully enjoy the soft-meets-crunchy texture of the cookie and the gourmet flavors of the ice cream.

Even though I love ice cream sandwiches, I’ve always lamented what seems like a lack of differentiation in the field. With few exceptions, ice cream sandwiches have been pretty much the same since I was a kid, despite how far we’ve come in flavor innovation in what seems like every other category imaginable. While Cool Jacks does offer a traditional combo — the Classic Jack with vanilla ice cream sandwiched between two chocolate chip cookies — it also produces some less expected combinations, like the Jack Attack — caramel ice cream between two snickerdoodles — and, my personal favorite, the Jack Frost — two double chocolate cookies with mint chip ice cream. 

The full line of Cool Jacks also includes the Jumping Jack, a chocolate ice cream-stuffed peanut butter cookie sandwich and the Super Jack, which combines M&M cookies with a psychedelic Superman ice cream (a tri-colored vanilla-based ice cream that hails from Michigan). I keep our freezer stocked with the Jumping Jacks for my husband and the Jack Frost for myself. The kids prefer the Classic Jack, and I can’t say I blame them. It’s the perfect way to stay cool on a hot summer day.

Buy: Cool Jacks Jack Frost Ice Cream Sandwiches, $10.39 for 4 sandwiches on Instacart

This post was originally published on Kitchn. Read it there: These $10 Ice Cream Sandwiches Are the Cool Treats I Wish I Had When I Was a Kid