Socially Accepted

Ice Cream is about as social as you can get.  From the brilliant suggestion in a MaryJanes' Farm Magazine in the summer of 2011, we've begun a neighborhood tradition, two years running now, of having an ice cream social the first Sunday after Labor Day.

The weather has shown us its extremes of melt-your-ice-cream-in-a-minute 90 degrees the first year and 68 degrees with a noticeable breeze this last Sunday.  No one seems to care either way.  What fun it is for folks to chat about their summer vacations and projects, to catch up on how school goes for the young ones, to drip ice cream and wait briefly in line for third helpings of ten varieties of home-made delicious goodies.

Nearly all the recipes came from The Perfect Scoop, by David Lebovitz.  The fun part was eating the bowls filled with all the icy sweetness.  Making ice cream cones shaped into bowls is delicious way to use up all the egg whites generated from custard-type ice cream.  If this kind of effort for a special dessert sounds like it might be fun, check out Joe Pastry for the recipe.

This batter is sticky!

Cookie dough scoop

Two circles are better than three

Shape the bowls over an inverted glass

There are plenty of Things I get to do today, but I must remember what was learned the previous time I made these bowls.  1.  Thin is better than thick even if your circle is bigger than the 6 inches:  easier to shape the bowl when it comes out of the oven.  2.  Use a cookie dough scoop for measuring out the 2 tablespoons required for each bowl.  3.  If you put 3 circles on a baking sheet, the third one will have cooled too much to shape it easily.  More is not always better.  Sometimes it's just more.  4. Do this again next year and for as many years as you can.  5.  When the neighbors visit, they become and stay friends.  When they stop talking to each other, there's space for problems to slip in. Fill folks with ice cream to keep things sweet.