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EAT THIS IMMEDIATELY: Bredenbeck's homemade Chipwich
If the Chipwich were a human, it would be arrested for statutory; it seduced me at a very young age.
EAT THIS IMMEDIATELY: Bredenbeck’s homemade Chipwich
For as long as I remember, my ice cream man go-to has been the Chipwich. Sure, I had a brief affair with fudge-banana-fudges and Firecracker pops as red (cherry), white (lemon) and blue (raspberry) as the Fourth of July. But like a prodigal lover, I always came back to the timeless threesome of chip-encrusted vanilla ice cream between a pair of thin cookies. If the Chipwich were a human, it would be arrested for statutory; it seduced me at a very young age.
The Chipwich is often imitated, never duplicated. Have you tried the poseurs? The cookies are always too cakey, the chocolate chips applied in wartime rations. They never live up to what the ice cream man carries in his cooler. So you can imagine my trepidation when I noticed a plate of Chipwiches in the front freezer case at the quaint Bredenbeck’s Bakery & Ice Cream Parlor (8126 Germantown Ave.) in Chestnut Hill. (What was I doing in Chestnut Hill? Reviewing Chip Roman's Mica, of course. Read about it next Thursday.)
Bredenbeck’s has been baking since 1889, but it's only since 1985 that they’ve been hand-dipping ice cream, too. Bavarian immigrant Frederick Robert Bredenbeck began the bakery in Northern Liberties, expanding over the years into Mayfair, Germantown and Mt. Airy locations. In 1954, he handed over the business to two longtime employees, Walter and Otto Haug; Walter’s daughter, Karen Boyd-Rhode, took over in 1983, opening the Chestnut Hill storefront, and the brightly colored ice cream parlor two years later.
I debated for a long minute between a chocolate malt and a Chipwich. But nostalgia won out, and I tore back the sweet sandwich’s Saran Wrap like a kid opening a Christmas present. Baked next door, the thin, buttery cookies had a fresh snap, and there were so many semisweet chocolate chips around the outside, the white of the vanilla only peeked through. The first few bites hit that memory I was hoping for, but the super-firm ice-cream core really did me in; I actually had to chew it, molars and all — exactly the way I’ve dispatched so many Chipwiches from John's and Charlie's and J.J.‘s and Conrad’s dry-ice treasure chests. Eat this immediately!
I gotta try this. But in the meantime, I'm addicted to the ones from Trader Joe's. Oh. Em. Gee.— kishwerv- Adam, this is hilarious— MLF
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