Singapore Ice Cream Sandwich

If you want a true ice cream sandwich, look no further than Singapore’s street food scene.

Outside schools and on street corners with high foot traffic, vendors peddle heat-busting, revitalizing ice cream. Rather than stack rounded scoops atop a cone, they slice individual portions off a block, then wrap the thick slab in a slice of bread. Tasters describe the novel texture of melting ice cream atop simultaneously-dissolving bread as a soft, creamy mouthful of goodness.

The cheap snack features ice cream flavors such as sweet corn, coffee, coconut, raspberry, or durian. The bread also comes in a variety of styles, ranging from fluffy, processed white bread to sweetened, multicolored slices dyed with food coloring and pandan leaf extract. The iconic rainbow swirl bread that many carts keep on hand makes the finished sandwich quite a head-turner.

Sandwich purists have mentioned that this frozen confection, which uses a singular piece of bread wrapped around the bottom of an ice cream block, is more visually reminiscent of a taco. While this might diminish the dessert’s integrity as a real sandwich, it heightens the structural integrity of the street fare that’s quickly melting in your hand.