Moo Shu perfected its winter-only ice cream sandwiches after plenty of trial and error, and the payoff is incredible.
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Moo Shu Ice Cream & Kitchen
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Open: Thursday to Sunday 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., closed Monday through Wednesday
Prices: Ice cream sandwiches ($8.50)
I learned only last weekend that Moo Shu offered brûléed ice cream sandwiches, which means that, to my embarrassment, I’m late to this party by a few years. Still, it was that extra adjective that lured me into the recently relocated, work-in-progress store, which is still short of all its seating and even lacks signage facing Wellington Street West. To be crystal clear, Moo Shu is not to be confused with the Tim Hortons next door.
But back to ice cream sandwiches that have been brûléed. That means that two of the ice cream block’s surfaces have been dusted with powdered sugar and torched, resulting in a beguiling bit of charred, caramel flavour and a bit of crunch.
Liz Mok, Moo Shu’s owner, explained to me that brûléed ice cream sandwiches are a seasonal speciality, more or less only available between October and March. The reason is that once the ambient temperature gets too warm, the torched ice cream under the layer of torched sugar and doesn’t refreeze. That leaves you with a dangerously unstable ice cream sandwich, with a sheet of torched sugar that might separate from its ice cream.
All the more reason to try this brûléed thermodynamic marvel while it’s cold, or even freezing, outside.
But if you come to Moo Shu for the brûlée, you’ll stay for the novel and impeccably crafted ice cream and the cookies that surround them. Moo Shu owner Liz Mok’s ice cream flavours feel like what you’ve been missing all your life when you eat them, and the cookies, which can be more akin to cakes or brownies, provide a tasty, yielding counterpoint.
Since Mok is Hong Kong-born, Asian-influenced ice cream and cookie flavours predominate at Moo Shu. I’ve tried three of seven options and all were great.
You can also get a creme caramel and blondie ice cream sandwich (it sounded less interesting to me) and a durian and brown sugar blondie ice cream sandwich (its durian-ness sounded too threatening to me).
“Ice cream is the best gateway to durian, it works to pull the sock flavour backwards,” Mok told me later.
Good news for vegans: The remaining two ice cream sandwiches — brown sugar vanilla and blueberry cake, and vegan coffee and black cocoa cake — will meet your key requirement.
One other excellent attribute of all of Mok’s ice cream sandwiches, brûléed or otherwise, is that they retain their structural integrity. When you bite into it, the ice cream never squooshes out from the sides of a too-hard cookie’s embrace.
Mok seemed pleased and proud when I told her that. “We do a lot of R&D on ice cream sandwiches to make sure that doesn’t happen,” she said. Sounding a bit like a physicist, she explained that she had developed a cake that has the same resistance to your teeth as the ice cream. Ideally, some moisture transfers from the ice cream to a slightly dryer cake to create “a very seamless bite resistance,” Mok says.
Or, you could just say that her ice cream sandwiches, apart from their jaw-distending size, are easy to eat.
For now, Moo Shu is open four days a week. Mok’s goal is to open six days a week by sometime in March. But don’t wait until then to go, because you never know — brûléed ice cream sandwich season could be over.
Do you have a favourite place to get a little treat in Ottawa? Send Peter Hum an e-mail to share your picks.