We all Scream for Ice Cream

Ice cream is one of those foods that grows on you with age. My mother pointed this out to me during one of our marathon phone calls, and I’m beginning to believe it. As a kid, I enjoyed homemade peach ice cream and root beer floats. The occasional trip to Braum's yielded my favorite - rocky road - double scooped and pressed into a cone (the pointy-tipped kind that tasted like a cookie), but if given a choice between ice cream and some other sweet treat, I usually picked "other." More and more, though, I am discovering that I really like this cold, creamy dessert.

Recently, as we meandered around the mall, Jeff bought us all chocolate-dipped cones at Dairy Queen. These old-fashioned yummies were fun to eat, especially since the soft-serve inside was a twist of vanilla and chocolate together. Even the squat little sugar-wafer cone was good with the melted cream gathered in the bottom. While it tasted good, more importantly, the cone was just plain fun to eat. It made me feel like a kid again in the Oklahoma heat, slurping at the tip to catch any melted drippings. Obviously, the nostalgia factor is a real player here.

Last weekend as tall and shaggy accompanied me to the grocery, Jeff stuck his head out the door and asked for some ice cream. This presented a bigger task than you might think since there are so many kinds to choose from. I read labels for moose tracks, bunny tracks, and train tracks! Every kind of variation on chocolate was available from chocolate ice cream to mint ice cream with chocolate chips to death by chocolate which had a chocolate base, chocolate syrup swirls, chocolate chips, and crumbled pieces of chocolate cookies. Fruit flavors were abundant as well in variations of peach, strawberry, cheery, and apple pie. On top of the regular ice cream choices, there were at least 10 flavors of gelato and another ten sherbets. None of this even reckons the gourmet cartons located across the aisle from the regular stuff or the myriad ice cream pops and sandwiches nearby. Ultimately we brought home two cartons - birthday cake (vanilla ice cream with ribbons of butter cream frosting and pieces of cake running through it) and cherry royale (chunks of black cherries and chocolate chips in a cherry base).

To add to this yumminess, my son whipped up a chocolate cake which is, of course, the perfect complement to ice cream, especially the cherry. Mmm... moist cake, sweet frosting, cold creaminess, cherry bits - who could ask for more? So, the last few evenings we have feasted on the classic cake and ice cream combo, and with every bite I kept thinking, "I didn't realize I liked ice cream so much." Just about then a Baskin Robbins ice cream cake commercial popped on the television screen - what timing.

So, next weekend, when I am preparing for our final musical of the season (Tommy), I'm planning not an ice cream cake, but an ice cream pie that I made several years ago from a Sandra Lee recipe. Gooey Mud Pie includes a chocolate cookie crust and layers of ice cream, hot fudge, magic shell, and whipped topping. The recipe calls for coffee ice cream, but my notes show I used butter pecan since Jeff isn't a coffee fan. Of course, anything that goes well with chocolate - like mint, or the cherry in the fridge - would be fabulous. I can already taste it now!