Within Australia, popular brands are Giant Sandwich, and Monaco Bar in the Eastern states. Other brands include Streets "Cookie", Maxibon and Maxibon Cookie, and Pat and Stick's Homemade range. Ice cream sandwiches were formerly known as a "cream between". One purchased a small block of ice cream wrapped in paper and placed it between two wafers.
In North America, an ice cream sandwich is a block of ice cream, usually vanilla although other flavors can be used, sandwiched between two rectangular cookie wafers, and normally rectangular in shape. The earliest mentions come in 1899. Street vendors in New York previously sold slabs of ice cream between sheets of paper, called "hokey pokeys", until someone had the idea of using cookies instead. Photos from the Jersey Shore circa 1905 show ice cream sandwiches being sold at 1¢ each. The earliest US patent having to do with ice cream sandwiches is by Russell H. Proper for an "Ice Cream Sandwich Machine" in 1921. A Chipwich, where ice cream is sandwiched between two chocolate chip cookies, is also popular. A "National Ice Cream Sandwich Day" is set for August 2, and has been celebrated at least since 2005.
In Israel, ice cream sandwiches are commonly known as "kasata". Though the name comes from the Italian cassata, the dessert itself has little to do with Italian cassata, and usually consists of two thick biscuits holding a mix of block of vanilla and chocolate flavored ice cream.
Philippines
Local ice cream sellers/peddlers with their pushcarts that travel around cities sometimes offer ice cream sandwiches with pandesal as the bread.
Wafer ice cream is a type of ice cream popular in Singapore, often known as potong ice cream, which consists of two wafers holding together a block of ice cream. Vendors are commonly found along Orchard Road and Chinatown and outside schools. A colloquial term for it is "pia ice cream", which translates to "biscuit ice cream" in the Hokkien dialect. Common flavours offered include ripple, red bean, yam, sweet corn, durian, honeydew, peppermint, chocolate, and chocolate chip. Wafer ice cream vendors also sell the same blocks of ice cream on slices of multicolored bread, on cones or in cups instead of sandwiched between wafers. The ice cream block is essentially a huge log of ice cream, which is then cut '' and sandwiched between two wafers. There are differences between countries: Singaporean street vendors do not offer individually wrapped ice cream sandwiches like Australia does.
In the United Kingdom an ice cream wafer, consisting of a small block of ice cream between two rectangular wafer biscuits, was a popular alternative to a cone up until the 1980s. Since then it has declined and is now rarely seen. A "nougat wafer" was also available, consisting of a layer of nougat sandwiched between two wafers and coated with chocolate around the edges. Typically a vanilla block sandwiched between one plain wafer and one chocolate-covered nougat one. Nougat wafers came in double or triple varieties, depending on the number of nougat wafers in the construction.
In Ireland they are known as "sliders" or an ice cream wafer, and are usually served as vanilla ice cream sandwiched between two rectangular chocolate wafers. A "double nougat" is ice cream sandwiched between two nougat wafers. The wafers are not covered in chocolate, only the edges.
In Vietnam, an ice cream sandwich called bánh mì kẹp kem is commonly sold on the street as a snack. It consists of scoops of ice cream stuffed inside a bánh mì, topped with crushed peanuts.
