Speed Bumps in My Ice Cream

Another ice cream post? Is he mad? No. Is he crazy? Yes. But that's not why I'm writing about ice cream again. On the eve of departing from home to medical school, I had to visit the one food place that I knew I would truly miss. The one foodery that I honestly don't know how I will live without. I have nightmares, cold sweats, and uncontrollable sporadic shivers when I imagine a world without it. I am blinded by fear and incapacitated with trembling as I think that I may never again encounter the ice cream of unsurpassable greatness that is Hoffman's (which is all absolute, made-up rubbish because I would probably travel across half the country at least twice a year for my ice cream fix from this place).


Indeed, even on a day of torrential downpours, blinding lightning, and ear-wrenching thunder, this trip of mournful departure had to be made.

The dude scooping with a bit of an airhead (there was an unrequested spoonful of cookie dough ice cream in between my Oreo and Fudge Mint Cookie flavors), but as the final product fully looked like it belonged on the cover of the Candyland board game, I found it none too difficult to forgive.

On a serious note, I find myself once again needing to speak about flavor selection. In my last ice cream post I touched on flavor pairing, something I believe many neglect.  There is an additional factor, however, that ought to affect flavor choice and needs to be considered: cup or cone.

While I am traditionally a fan of the cup for a couple of reasons:
1. It is usually easier for the scooper to give you more ice cream. With a cone you run the risk of crushing the cone as the ice cream is pressed down. Making the scooper's life easier equals more ice cream.
2. Many times the bottom of the cone is not filled with ice cream (especially when you're dealing with hard ice cream) again because of the risk of crushing the cone with pressing down the ice cream. And, what I do NOT want for my ice cream godbite is a big bite of cone with no ice cream (and eating the cone from bottom up is such a class-less way to eat it).
3. Companies frequently put little paper wrappers around the handle of the cone (dumbest idea ever) and not only is the paper commonly difficult to take off but glue residue is also more often than not left behind (can you say "unappetizing?" - cone glue, now an important part of a healthy and balanced diet)

I am not, however, a hard and fast no-cone proponent. I'm just selective.

Regardless, I do suggest some thought enter into your flavor decision once the choice of cup or cone is made. It all has to do with eating technique.

With a cone, the primary tool of consumption is the tongue.  Like a land-mover shifting mountains of earth, the tongue journeys in ceaseless revolutions removing ice cream from the cone.  NEVER should any teeth ever be involved!!! If there are, you're eating it wrong (yes, it is possible to eat wrong).

So, if the ice cream has huge chunks of chocolate chips or whatever other add-ins you choose, this will impede the tongues smooth glide around the cone (think hitting speed bumps in a parking lot while traveling at 50 miles per hour). Not a fun experience.

With a cup and spoon, those speed bumps (don't call them "humps." i've seen that and it sounds weird) don't exist. It's like Superman built a steamroller and ran right over them. poof. gone.

So choose your flavors wisely.

One last thing of the subject of ice cream pairing, I recently heard tell of a tea and frozen yogurt (i'm not a fan of frozen yogurt and i don't consider it anywhere near equal to ice cream) joint opening up near my home in NJ. Think about it. Tea. Frozen yogurt. tea. frozen yogurt. Doesn't that just strike you as wrong? I'm sorry, when I'm sitting down to a ginormous bowl of chocolate moose tracks ice cream I'm not thinking, "Oh what I wouldn't give right now for a big ol' cup of steaming green tea." Who thunk up that crazy idea? If only I could make millions of dollars by not investing in a company, I'd be rich off of that one. I give them a month before they close the doors on that brilliant idea.

The Mish-Mash Flavor Dash

So brother is planning on conquering his first marathon this coming November by hitting up the Philly marathon. But, training can be hard and super brutal particularly on those "long run" days. As miles add up, the legs plod, the back stoops, and hills look like mountains. Then, blindly and without warning, the body feels the first touch of cold, hard clay and  *WHAM*... flat on your behind, staring up through a starry daze you gaze upon the insurmountably tall, brick and mortar barricade in front of you. Congratulations, you've met... The Wall.

Enter gel shot doohickey. I have it from a good source that Logan swears the resulting feeling is what he imagines being on drugs must be like. Sweet. Now we'll have kids addicted to energy gels.

What I'd rather have stuffed in my back pocket for a much needed energy punch is a slice of this puppy.

 It also sure beats those chalky, gag-inducing recovery shakes. Really. Try it some time.

The cake is pretty much a taste marathon in and of itself - or perhaps an Ironman triathlon through flavortown.  Chocolate cake flavored with honey, coffee, and vanilla and almond extracts, almond creme filling in the middle, apricot preserves on top, and a rum-bittersweet chocolate ganache icing.

It was my post bike ride pick-me-up, and it was seriously good.

Also, in the course of eating it, I think I  discovered that flavor is the 5th dimension.

The only problem is that there are SOoooooooooo many flavors and they're sooooooo far away from each other... relatively speaking. So for a godbite that would include the almond creme, apricot preserves, rum-bittersweet chocolate ganache, and chocolate cake without requiring a mouth funnel, a little flavor shuffling was required.

Yup yup.

Now go run a marathon.