Best Handmade Ice-Cream Sandwich

Since desserts and sweets are an indulgence, a little kindness you allow yourself here and there, the smartest thing you can do is to make them really count. When you splurge, allow yourself something sinful, something decadent, something truly special. When you splurge, allow yourself a homemade ice-cream sandwich from Eats Market Café.

Three varieties are offered: the classic, with vanilla bean ice cream inside two CD-sized chocolate chip cookies; a double chocolate whiz-bang featuring milk chocolate malt ice cream and chocolate chip cookies; and, for summer, two thick sugar cookies around a slab of strawberry buttermilk sherbet. There's no point in trying to steer you around the first two if you're a traditionalist. You won't find better chocolate chip cookies (you can also buy them and the sugar cookies out of the jar, sans ice cream), and the vanilla bean ice cream is perfection. The milk chocolate malt? You would eat an entire gallon of it if you could, straight out of the container. But if you love fresh strawberries, strawberry shortcake, strawberries and cream, or just the idea of a bright red berry on a warm summer day, the sherbet sandwich will knock your socks off.

Toby Matasar, formerly Tom Douglas' executive pastry chef, owns the hands that craft these big beauties; she and her crew make the ice cream and the sherbet in-house, and, naturally, they bake the cookies that sandwich them. Frozen rock hard, the anticipation becomes almost agonizing while you wait for them to soften up a little. Be patient, they're worth it. 2600 S.W. Barton St., 206-933-1200, www.eatsmarket.com.