History Repeats Itself

My Brooklyn family migrated to Suburban land in the pre- mall late sixties. All American Hamburger and Carvel now Long Island institutions (No not mental institutions, although they could be) were the happenin' places to stop on the way home from Jones Beach. They had adjoining parking lots so you could grab your hunk of meat on a bun at All American and then sidle over to Carvel for a soft serve swirl cone, or a bonnet. A bonnet is a soft serve ice cream cone covered with hardened chocolate or red cherry. Bonnets are really quite tasty and made from shellac. They come in handy if you ever tell anybody, "Well I'll eat my hat". You can fool them and just eat a bonnet.

One day on the way back from a scorching day at Tobey Beach my mom pulled her sparkly new snot green Olds into Carvel and gave my crazy 9 year old sister, Heidi money to get ice cream. Heidi continued singing the fourth reprise of our favorite Flintstones' song, "Here We Come on the Run With A Burger and A Bun" as she entered this culinary landmark. From our car we watched our cones being dipped by an unappetizing boy with zits and Carvel paper hat. Zit boy handed three cones to Heidels. She exited with a brilliant encore of what else but, "Here We Come On the Run ..." Just as Heidi nailed the high note "Burger and a Bunnnn", my mom and I witnessed one vanilla cone, one bonnet and one chocolate cone with rainbow sprinkles go flying through the air in ESPN slow motion and Splat hit the windshield of our snot green Oldsmobile.

Some recipes suggest baking cupcake batter right inside the cone. That just makes a measly single serve. Marcia and I had to make Carvel double soft serve cupcakes. Rather than bake the cupcakes right in the cone I baked 2 dozen standard size and 2 dozen mini vegan cupcakes by themselves. We added some granola and vegan chocolate chips to the base of the cone to balance the bottom. After cooling, Marcia and I iced the top of the standard cupcake, inverted it into said cone, iced the top of that cupcake and placed the mini on top of that. Wallah double dip! So far so good!

We added a crumb coat and and proceeded to ice what looked like a real deal Carvel cone. Yay. Yeah, yay until the suckers wouldn't stand erect, in the freakin' cupcake holders. Marcia had a lightbulb moment and made adorable little foil packets to brace the cones. The cones lasted all of ten minutes. We then decided to lie the cones next to each other on some parchment. Larry carefully began to move the now lopsided bonnets to the fridge. ESPN slowmo on Larry...

Here are our unsplattered salvaged Flinstone Carvel cones.


But wait there's a better way to make these babies stand up and behave. Check out one of the comments on the very cool link below and find out how. Who would have thunk it?


http://veganyumyum.com/2007/01/hand-dipped-ice-cream-cone-cupcakes/