Tested: Sweet Spot Ice Cream Sandwich Maker

Over-the-top ice cream sandwiches may be having a moment this summer, but when it comes to sweet nostalgia, nothing beats those classic paper-wrapped chocolate-cookie-and-vanilla-ice-cream sandwiches that Good Humor does oh so very well.

Engineering-wise, the Good Humor sandwich is far from flawless — a bite or two of paper wrapper is inevitable. That wrapper is no match for ice cream melting a little too quickly in the heat. Nevertheless, there's something about the simplicity of those soft, perforated chocolate cookies and airy vanilla ice cream that's strangely perfect.

The Sweet Spot Ice Cream Sandwich Maker (retail price: $19.99) is banking on the nostalgia factor with this absolutely adorable and easy-to-use four-piece kit. Shaped like an oversize ice cream sandwich, the kit comes complete with two chocolate-hued silicon molds for baking the brownie cookies, a hard plastic spatula for ice cream scooping and a divider for molding perfectly geometric summertime snacks.

The process begins by making the easy chocolate batter provided in the instruction manual. It comes together in a matter of minutes and isn't really all that different from most brownie recipes out there. Once all of the lumps have been whipped out of the batter (a stand mixer is your friend here), one-tablespoon scoops are placed into the silicon molds. Layering the batter evenly and getting it to reach all four corners of the molds can be either painstaking or fulfilling, depending on how you feel about tasks like spackling.

After a quick 10 minutes in the oven, the cookies emerge perfectly cooked and pleasingly pliable before they go into the fridge for a 20-minute chill session. Filling the ice cream sandwiches is a breeze using the combination of the rectangular mold and ice cream spatula. No pre-softening needed before filling up the four sandwich molds and popping the top layer of cookies on top.

Although it is possible to leave the sandwiches in the fridge overnight for optimal freezing, you're more than welcome to take them out after an hour and either wrap in wax paper for old times' sake or eat them straight out of the mold.

Creating photo-ready ice cream sandwiches is a big plus for Sweet Spot, but the real magic here is in the cookie recipe and mold. It mimics the cookies of those childhood favorites while allowing the ice cream sandwich-crafter to layer them with something a little more thrilling than Brand X vanilla. Go for something good here with high butterfat, locally sourced milk, sophisticated flavors, et cetera, and you'll have a lovely blend of old-school meets modern summer sweets.