Snack Time: Ice Cream featuring Soft Serve with Special Guest, The McFlurry
Ice cream, especially soft serve, speaks to me in ways other treats cannot. There are few things in life that I would consider eating several days in a row but I can assure you soft serve ranks high on the list followed by a close second of a marinated kale salad. I’m not going to sit here and wax poetic about a childhood sprinkled (see what I did there?!) with memories of going to the ice cream shop with my parents because the truth is, I only remember going to the red sno cone hut in Grapevine, Texas, which was good, but had a significantly less amount of saturated fat, but oddly, a flavor that now in my adulthood tastes like a Flemish Sour. The only ice cream memories from my childhood was having a thing for Neopolitan ice cream but I could never pronounce the flavor correctly. I was always like ‘Hey mom, gimme some neh-po-lay-shun ice cream puh-lease’ and she delivered.
The thing I love about soft serve is that it is so overly decadent that it makes your teeth hurt before you even swallow a spoonful. There is nothing like pulling your spoon away from a cup of custard and seeing the strings of eggy goodness that you are about to ingest and possibly immediately regret since you have to wear a bathing suit tomorrow next to all of your skinny friends. For me, it’s love at first bite with every cone. So how did ice cream come about? Like all great food stories, it involved a lot of peasants, exploration, and of course, technological evolution.
Ice cream historians (sign me up!) speculate that the icy treat dates back as far as the second century B.C., though, there is no specific date or founder which basically means ice cream appeared out of thin air and the people rejoiced. The end. JK.
Shortly after the appearance of ice cream, it was reported that Alexander the Great liked to dabble in what we now call snow cones and Claudius Caesar liked to send his peasants into the mountain to chisel fresh ice that he flavored with fruit juices (side note: pretty sure said peasants pissed in Claud’s shaved ice and called it pineapple but that’s beside the point). As time passed, people were still eating shaved ice until Marco Polo came back to Italy a thousand years later from the “Far East” and was all like “Hey, let’s add cream and see what happens” - BOOM - sherbet is born or what they called “Cream Ice.” Around 1660 cream ice was made available to the public and there was sharp increase in sales of elastic waistband knickers.
Eventually, the bourgeoisie treat made its way to American shores but nobody really knows when. The first official documentation of ice cream came from a letter that was written by a guest of Maryland Governor William Bladen in 1774. I imagine it went something like this:
Hey Bill,
Went to Italy this summer with the fam and had something called cream ice. It was delish and thought I’d give it a whirl in the U.S. and maybe change things around grammatically and call it ice cream. Meet me in the kitchen at 8pm for a tasting, I already let your kitchen staff know about this.
Ron
Eventually ice cream became all the rage in the White House, so much, that the country’s main squeeze, George, spent $200 each summer on ice cream. Thomas Jefferson even had some convoluted recipe that caused everyone to get all ragey because it was an 18-step process that ultimately amounted to a modern-day Baked Alaska and who the fuck likes Baked Alaskas anyway? Ice cream remained accessible exclusively to society’s elite until 1800 when insulated ice houses were invented and the art of manufacturing ice cream became an actual industry in the United States because of some guy in Baltimore. Fast forward a few years and ice cream became trendier than peasants when tortillas came around.
Some additional fun facts about ice cream that I don’t feel like writing witty things about but are worth noting:
Soda Jerks emerged in 1874 with the invention of the ice cream soda
Those with sweet teeth received religious criticism for indulging in “sinfully” rich ice cream sodas on Sundays so the soda jerks removed the carbonation and thus the Ice Cream Sunday was born
“Sunday” was later changed to “Sundae” to not conflict, or associate itself, with the Sabbath
Scientists later learned sugar is basically like an opioid and is extremely addictive but most of us still eat it knowing it’s a better alternative than going to a methadone clinic twice a week
On the topic of opioids, I have tried all forms of ice cream: the ice cream truck varieties and their novelty counterparts, homemade with my refurbished CuisinArt, Jason’s Deli’s free soft serve, the $4.75-a-scoop at Humphrey Slocombe’s and a Sweet Cream Biscuit and Peach Jam cone found in Columbus, Ohio. So where do I really stand on ice cream?
On more than one occasion I have found myself at the McDonald's drive-thru for a McFlurry. You're probably wondering why I choose the McFlurry over the Blizzard and more importantly, why the heck am I foregoing the good shit for well, shit. Here's why: I get it faster. You think I care that if you pause to tip my blended ice cream treat upside down to prove its holy blendedness? I don't. You think I enjoy waiting in long lines for your authentic hand-dipped flavors-you-can-only-find-here? I'm more like 'gimme gimme' than 'wait wait' when it comes to nourishing the sweet roll that is the soft inner tube around my stomach. Not only does McDonald's have a thicker stick-to-your-ribs-custard minus the health benefits of oatmeal, it has a higher goodies-to-ice cream ratio. What does this mean, you ask? IT MEANS NOT ONLY DOES RONALD MCDONALD BLEND OREOS INTO YOUR CUSTARD BUT THAT FUCKING CLOWN SPRINKLES THEM ON TOP LIKE IT'S TICKER TAPE ON WALL STREET.












