My husband's family is steeped in a tradition of good food, but one of the primary values that we have brought back to "Beck Farm East" is the obsession with homemade ice cream. Out in the midwest, his family has a 5 GALLON icecream maker (known to those who make ice cream as an ice cream *freezer*... rarely is it called a maker). This freezer is a HAND CRANK model. No power, no tractor hit and miss engine hook up, it is pure corn fed elbow grease power. Everyone goes outside and we all take turns churning. It is a family event and lots of fun, with aching arms to show for it the next day! Eventually, one of them has to either stand or sit on the freezer so someone can crank and the torque required doesn't tip it over. The Becks are serious about ice cream! When we got married, one of the first things we put on our registry was a one gallon "White Mountain" ice cream freezer, that had both a hand crank and also a electric motor. Starting our married life with out an ice cream freezer would have been possible grounds for annulment! :)
I have to be honest, out east here, the electric motor gets more use out here more than the hand crank. For that I am exceedingly thankful!
Friends and family now know that our "thing" in the summer is to come to BBQ's or family cookouts and bring the ice cream makings and show everyone how it is made. It is a part of summer I have come to treasure seeing kids licking the dripping dasher (the part of the ice cream maker that goes round and round on the inside), covering their faces, when we take theice cream out. We serve it up in waffle bowls, which is the "fad" thing now in the millennium "tween" years here in the north east.
Flash back to 1988....Way, way before I was married, I was part of my high school's foreign exchange program with our sister school in Bonn, Germany. We walked through the streets of Bonn with our German friends, trolling around the downtown area. One of the frequent things to do was stopping at the multiple ice cream shops that made their own waffle cones. They had the broken pieces out in a basket on the counter as free samples and the American kids hadn't had anything like it, EVER. The 'sugar cones' we have in the states didn't begin to resemble those fresh, crisp, addicting bites.
Back then, waffle cones were just starting to take off in the states. They were a novelty to behold. D'Angelo sandwich shop chain "Steves' Ice Cream" had them in the Fanueil Hall food court, but they were NOTHING like what we had on the streets of Bonn. I was highly dissapointed in what I got from any ice cream retailer peddling waffle cone treats.
So fast forward to the new millennium, and I marry into a premier Dayton Ohio food catering family with an obsession for fresh ice cream. It was only a matter of time before I figured out how to make waffle cones or the newly trendy "waffle bowls". So with my Christmas gift money this year, I went to Kitchen Outfitters in Acton (kitchen-outfitters.com) and bought myself a waffle cone maker, figuring I could mold the waffle into a bowl shape with little effort. I had a little bit of a learning curve, but I figured it out. And they are every bit as tasty and crazy addicting as what I had in Bonn.
So with out further adieu, here is how I sorted out how to make waffle bowls!
Gear:
Waffle Iron, Mold/Form, Mixer, Hand Whisk, 2-3 TBS Disher, Rubber Spatula
Waffle Iron
You are going to need a waffle maker...or a pizelle maker that makes large pizelles, regardless of what the other folks on the internet tell you. I would highly advocate getting the waffle maker, you will be able to make a realistic size bowl vs a small cup size bowl.
Mold/Form
This is where my learning curve started. Many postings on the internet have you believe that you stick the hot off the iron waffle into a over sized muffin tin (to form via cavity mold). Clearly these people have never touched the waffle when it comes out of the iron, or they have fingers that are heat proof. Also, they need to be stackable and usable. I didn't have a over sized muffin tin, but I had bowls that were approximately the right size. I pushed the hot waffle in to the cavity of the bowl and pulled out my first bowl. It was able to hold ice cream, but the sides were far to ruffly to be stackable. It really looked more like a taco salad tortilla shape. Not really what I was looking for. I realized the difference between what I had in my hand and what the "Joy" cone company did, was they put theirs in a "press" so that each bowl was just like the last. The task was then to "press" mine, rather than just put it into a mold and try to make a form. So, how does one do that? The easiest way I cam up with was to not put it "IN" to a mold, but to drape it outside of the cavity or form. As these things are gawd awfully hot to the touch when they come out of the iron, I needed to protect my hands somehow. I have two "Ove Gloves" which are great for protecting my hands when I pop bread out of pans, but it would not create a consistent product. These waffles cool fast, and if you don't press it evenly all around fast enough, the bowl will not work. I needed a positive and negative mold. What I realized is, just like Dorothy in the Wizard of OZ, I had the power all along! My Pyrex 2 cup liquid measuring cup was the perfect size for this. But what to fit over it? What would provide even pressure all around? I looked upon the shelf behind my oven, and there was a recently washed Chinese soup bowl my mother had sent home with me, previously used as a butter compote filled with lobster and butter from her birthday party weeks before. I placed the bowl upside down on top of my measuring cup, and voila! I had my positive and negative molds! This was my solution... not all Chinese soup bowls are the same size. My recommendation is to rummage through your cupboards to find a bowl or soup mug that might work. It is a little trial and error. My solution came to me fairly quickly. I hope yours does too.
The recipe that I am listing here came from my waffle maker's book. It makes 6-8 cones. Now, I AM my Mothers' daughter, and when cooking is involved, I do NOTHING small. This weekend I am feeding 60+ people ice cream and waffle bowls. So I scaled it. Scaling a recipe generally involves a painful recollection of 3d grade fraction lessons from elementary school. I don't really like to do it by hand, as when I am cooking for a large number of people, any mistake will cost LOTS of money in food. Instead, I use a cooking programs to scale for large numbers of people. Now, I can tell you that not all recipes "scale". Sometimes you need to make things in small batches. But this recipe scales just fine. Oh and the software you might want to look into is either "MacGourmet" or "Cooking Light". I have used both in the past and I like them equally well.
The one thing I will say about the recipe here, is that you have to follow the ORDER in which the ingredients are added. There is a certain chemistry to baking with sugar and eggs... it is best not to mess with it.
Gourmet Waffle Cone recipe from Chefs Choice
(Mind you the image above is from a scaled recipe for 60 cones)
Bowl 1:
1 whole egg
1 egg white
Bowl 2:
1/2 cup granulated sugar
Bowl 3:
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1/3 cup of sifted all-purpose flour
Bowl 4: (well I used a tea cup and the microwave, but you get the point)
2 tablespoons of melted butter, cooled slightly
Step 1:
Put the eggs into your mixing bowl, mix together as you would for scrambled eggs. Gradually add the granulated sugar, while you have the mixer on medium. Watch for the batter to turn a "light yellow" color.
Step 2: Mix the salt and the flour together using a hand wisk, then slowly start to add this to the egg mixture in your mixer.
Step 3: Once the flour has been blended in, slowly add the butter into the mixture. Mix until it is absorbed.
Heat up your waffle iron to the #2.5 or #3 setting, (mine worked well on 3), and follow the directions for prepping the iron for its first use. Spray the iron with vegetable oil.
I put two dishers of batter in for each waffle. Depending on the size of your disher, you might have to put more or less.
I set my timer for 2 minutes.
Remove warm waffle cookie with caution as it is hot. Place on mold form and press.
How to Form:
I placed my two cup pyrex upside down on a plate, and then centered the cookie wafer evenly over the bottom of the glass. Taking the bowl, I then quickly slid the interior of the bowl over the bottom of the measuring cup. As I slid this down, I aided the mold by lightly touching the edges of the waffle and pressing in to the measuring cup glass. Use caution as this is hot. You might want to consider using food service gloves or something if you are sensitive to heat, or cannot feel heat.
Hold for about 30 seconds or so, and then remove bowl. Pop new waffle bowl off of glass and then place on a cooling rack. I put mine in the oven as I had to keep them away from the humidity of a rainy day. I set the oven to 150 just to encourage the humidity to go out of the oven.
Anywho... That is waffle bowl making in a nutshell! Happy waffle making!
