Many printers allow you to print 2 pages (or more) per sheet.
If you tell Powerpoint to print the handouts as one slide per page and the
printer 2 per page then you will get the desired effect. And, unlike
Powerpoint's inbuilt 2-per-page facility there will only be modest white
space around each slide.
I use this technique telling the printer to print 4 per page and the
resultant images are as big as the Powerpoint inbuilt 2-per-page.
Chris