Sunbeam Bread Makes Ice Cream Taste Better!

Ice cream is hands down the quintessential summer treat! The season isn't quite the same without a scoop of it. For over a century, Americans have been enjoying ice cream on a cone. Whether it's a waffle, sugar or wafer cone, what better way to enjoy a double scoop of your favorite flavor?

An ice cream cone is a brittle, cone-shaped pastry, usually made of a wafer similar in texture to a waffle, made so ice cream can be carried and eaten without a bowl or spoon. These edible cones were mentioned in French cookbooks as early as 1825, when Julien Archambault described how one could roll a cone from "little waffles.”

In the United States, edible vessels for ice cream took off at the turn of the century. In 1902, two Italian ice cream merchants patented an apparatus resembling a cup-shaped waffle iron made "for baking biscuit-cups for ice-cream" over a gas range. The following year, Italo Marchiony, from New York City, patented an improved design with a break-apart bottom so that more unusual cup shapes could be created out of the delicate waffle batter. Marchiony, who emigrated from Italy in the late 1800s, was granted a patent in December 1903.

A similar creation was introduced at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair by Ernest A. Hamwi. He was selling a crisp, waffle-like pastry in a booth right next to an ice cream vendor. Because of ice cream's popularity, the vendor ran out of dishes. Hamwi saw an easy solution to the ice cream vendor's problem: he quickly rolled one of his wafer-like waffles in the shape of a cone and gave it to the ice cream vendor who put ice cream in it. The customers were happy and the cone was on its way to becoming the great American institution that it is today.

Now, millions of rolled cones are turned out on machines that are capable of producing about 150,000 cones every 24 hours.

So what, you may ask, does this have to do with Sunbeam Bread? Well, did you know that you can make your own, homemade ice cream cones from just a few slices of fresh Sunbeam Bread? It’s simple!

Remove the crusts from the bread and with a rolling pin, roll out as thin as you can. Cut the bread into the shape of a quarter circle (use a bowl or small plate as a guide). Brush each side of the bread with melted butter and sugar. Sandwich the pieces of bread in between baking parchment in between two baking trays and bake for 6 minutes at 320°F. Wrap the bread around the cone shaper using the parchment paper to protect your fingers. Keep the cone on the mould for a minute or so until its cooled. Once cooled, dip into melted chocolate and into the desired topping. Fill with ice cream and top with all sorts of goodies!

For more ice cream cone recipes, visit out Pinterest page at https://pin.it/15KXpTG. Start practicing your technique because National Ice Cream Cone Day is on September 22 — be ready!