It’s-It

This is the one that tastes like the beach to anyone who grew up in the Bay Area: two oatmeal cookies, a slab of ice cream in the middle, the whole thing dipped in dark chocolate and frozen hard.

The It’s-It was created in 1928 by George Whitney at Playland-at-the-Beach, the seaside amusement park out by Ocean Beach in San Francisco. For decades you could only get one at Playland, which is exactly why people loved it, a treat tied to one place and one boardwalk. When Playland closed in the early 1970s the It’s-It could have disappeared with it, but production was revived and it is still made in the Bay Area today. It is one of the few California foods that is both a dessert and a piece of a lost landmark.

You can buy them, but making one is a good excuse to shoot the layers. Here is the homemade version.

Recipe: Homemade It’s-It

You need soft oatmeal cookies (bake or buy) matched in pairs, vanilla ice cream slightly softened, and about 8 ounces of dark chocolate melted with a tablespoon of coconut oil.

First, sandwich a scoop of ice cream between two oatmeal cookies, press gently, and freeze solid for at least two hours. Then dip each frozen sandwich in the melted dark chocolate to coat, letting the excess drip off. Finally, return them to the freezer until the shell sets hard, and eat cold.