We’ve been enjoying more than a few ice cream cones this month, National Ice Cream Month.

But what if you have gluten sensitivities. Where’s your cone?

Goldbaum’s, a natural food company based in Brooklyn, New York, is at the ready with two different cones that crunch as nicely as the “real thing.”

In the shape of waffle/cake cones, their texture is more like the lighter style wafer/cake cones (here’s the difference between the two types).

So what’s in a gluten-free cone? Instead of wheat, there’s a mix of potato starch and tapioca starch, plus other ingredients including sugar, salt and vanilla.

The gluten-free cones don’t have the flavor of wheat-based cones, but when ice cream is added, you won’t notice the difference—you’ll just enjoy the crunch.

The regular Goldbaum’s cones have just 11 calories apiece, so they’re a boon for calorie counters as well. The sugar cones have 41 calories, are an inch or so taller, and weigh in at 41 calories. Conventional ice cream cones have up to 20% more calories.

The line is certified kosher by OU. Find out more at Goldbaums.com.

Gluten-free fun. Photo by Elvira Kalviste | THE NIBBLE.

Ice cream was invented many centuries before the ice cream cone. Check out the history of ice cream cones.

It’s a miniature ice cream cake! Photo
courtesy Hey There Cupcake.

We were inspired by this Spumoni Sundae cupcake from Hey There Cupcake! of Denver, Colorado.

One of many flavors (see them all here), Spumoni Sundae is a cherry cupcake filled with ganache, topped with a scoop of pistachio buttercream frosting and garnished with a cherry and a miniature waffle fan (gaufrette).

We saw this as inspiration for ice cream cupcakes in any flavor. Just replace the buttercream with ice cream—it’s easier than making an ice cream cake.

ICE CREAM CUPCAKES RECIPE

1. Use your favorite cupcake recipe. When filling the cups, add less batter than the recipe instructs. For example, if it says to fill halfway, fill to only the one-third point. This creates room at the top to anchor a scoop of ice cream.

2. Scoop a round ball of ice cream atop each cupcake. Place in the freezer. Don’t garnish until ready to serve.

3. At serving time, garnish with your favorite sundae toppings: chocolate sauce, butterscotch sauce, whipped cream and a cherry. If you like, gild the lily with chopped nuts, mini chips, sprinkles or other favorites.

TIPS FOR BUYING CUPCAKES

Here are two tips from the bakers regarding general cupcake purchases:

 
MORE CUPCAKE FUN: RECIPES

It’s National Ice Cream Month, but since there’s no Frozen Yogurt Month, Gelato Month or Sorbet Month, use it as an excuse to branch out.

Try ice cream in a new form:

 
See all the frozen dessert in our Frozen Desserts Glossary.

A bombe combines different flavors of ice cream, or ice cream plus sorbet. Photo by Richard Dudley | SXC.

The only problem with watermelon sorbet is how difficult it is to find it. If you live near a motherlode, consider yourself fortunate.

Otherwise, if you have an ice cream maker, you can make it yourself. So light and delicious, watermelon sorbet is more than worth the effort.

Use red or yellow watermelon. Fortunately, a number of breeds have been hybridized so that there are just a few, white and very light, watermelon seeds. So you don’t have to de-seed the watermelon—a time savings that makes the rest of the recipe a breeze.

Find more of our favorite sorbet recipes.

Some days are so hot and humid that iced tea isn’t quite enough.

So freeze it into ice pops.

Favorite herbal teas make tasty pops. Just brew them to twice the concentration—two tea bags or two teaspoons of loose tea per cup.

Add your sweeter and freeze. You can also add a half teaspoon of spirit (gin, tequila, vodka), liqueur, or a splash of wine.

In the photo, chef Michael O’Boyle of Chicken Fried Steak.com has made ice pops with hibiscus tea, using round ice cube molds instead of conventional ice pop molds.

Make some and cool off!

Find more of our favorite recipes for sorbet and other frozen desserts.

Photo courtesy chef Michael O’Boyle, ChickenFriedSteak.com.

Olive oil ice cream. Photo © Funkybg |
Dreamstime.

Ice cream is our favorite food, so we look for special ways to celebrate in July, National Ice Cream Month.

First, we treated ourselves to three pints of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams, at $12.99 per pint. We found them in a specialty food market in New York City: Columbus, Ohio-based Jeni’s has begun distribution to specialty stores nationwide (see the store locator on the Jeni’s website). Jeni’s sells pints for $12.00, but the extra 99¢ was far better than the alternative of paying $65.00 in overnight shipping to get them from Columbus.

Jeni’s Splended Ice Creams are indeed splendid. Flavors such as Goat Cheese With Cherries and Sweet Corn are burned into our memory as the best ice cream we’ve ever had. The high price reflects the quality of the ingredients—it’s impossible to use better ones. You can taste the distinctive flavor of the local, grass-fed milk and cream.

But budget is a consideration for us, so for less than half the price, we’ll stick to Talenti Gelato. Both were NIBBLE Top Picks Of The Week (here are our reviews of Jeni’s and Talenti). But to our palate, Talenti Gelato is the best price-value ice cream out there: superpremium ice cream without the superpremium price.

For ice cream devotées, Jeni’s is a must-try. If there’s no Jeni’s near you, pick up a copy of Jeni’s ice cream cookbook.

Next, in honor of National Ice Cream Month and some very fruity Olave olive oil from Chile, we made our own ice cream: olive oil ice cream. (Fruity is just one of the flavor profiles of olive oil. See the others).

Olive oil ice cream?

If that sounds unusual to you, it was a new concept to us as well, when we first tried it in 2004. The occasion was the opening of Mario Batali’s pizzeria, Otto, in New York City. There was much to explore on the menu.

After a selection of appetizers and a pizza with lardo, we were handed the dessert menu and saw a collection of homemade gelato made by pastry chef Meredith Kutzman. We ordered the olive oil gelato—and liked the extra-creamy elegance so much that we had another dish! (Here’s the difference between ice cream and gelato.)

OLIVE OIL ICE CREAM RECIPE

In a basic custard base, olive oil substitutes for some of the heavy cream. There are as many recipes as there are recipe tweakers. Emeril Lagasse, for example, uses fewer egg yolks but amps up the fat by using half and half instead of milk. He also adds a teaspoon of vanilla extract. You can do your own tweaking to find your ideal recipe.

The key is great-tasting olive oil. You should be able to drink it from the spoon and say, “Delicious!”

Ingredients

Olave is a fruity-style olive oil from Chile. You can buy it online. Photo courtesy Olave.

 
*We used fruity organic olive oil from Olave. You don’t want to use a peppery or grassy olive oil. See the different olive oil flavor profiles.

Preparation

1. Warm the milk, sugar, and salt in a medium saucepan.

2. In a separate medium bowl, whisk together the egg yolks. Slowly pour the warm mixture into the egg yolks, whisking constantly. Then scrape the warmed egg yolks into the saucepan.

3. Stir the mixture constantly over medium heat with a heatproof spatula, scraping the bottom as you stir, until the mixture thickens and coats the spatula. Turn off the heat when the custard just slightly thickens.

4. Pour the cream into a large bowl and set a mesh strainer on top. Pour the custard through the strainer and stir it into the cream.

5. Whisk the olive oil into the custard and cream mixture until it’s well blended; then stir until cool over an ice bath.

6. Chill the mixture thoroughly in the refrigerator, then freeze it in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Yield: 1 quart.

THE NEXT BEST THING

If you don’t want to make olive oil ice cream from scratch, use fine olive oil as a topping for vanilla ice cream.

We didn’t buy quite this many, but it sure
seemed like it! Photo by Alessandro Paiva |
SXC.

We were overly enthusiastic when we purchased a very large bunch of bananas at an excellent price. But of course, it’s no bargain if half of them spoil.

There were far more bananas than we could eat. It’s been too hot to turn on the oven to bake banana bread. And our overstuffed freezer precluded making banana ice cream (one of our favorites!).

Fortunately, we received our weekly email from Care2.com—one of our favorite e-newsletters—promising 15 ways to use bananas.

Written by Katie Waldeck, we repeat most of them here in edited form. Here’s the original article.

We haven’t tried them (except for the banana soft serve), so let us know what you think.

10 USED FOR BANANAS

Beauty

1. Condition Your Hair. Use Dr. Oz’s banana hair treatment.

2. Whiten Your Teeth. Don’t throw away the peel: Rub the inner side on your teeth for about two minutes before brushing. The magnesium, manganese and potassium in the peel will help to whiten your teeth naturally.

3. Make A Facial Mask. An anti-aging mask made from mashed bananas, heavy cream, honey and oat flour? Sounds like banana pudding! Here’s the recipe. Don’t let the dog get too close.

4. Make A Sugar Scrub. Whip up a scrub to exfoliate your skin. Here’s a recipe. Make a double batch and bring some to a friend (keep it in the fridge until ready to use, and use it within a few days).

Health

5. Insect Bite. If you don’t have any cortisone cream or other medication, rub the inner banana peel on the bite to alleviate the itch.

6. Splinter. Press the inside of the banana peel onto the splinter. The fruit’s natural enzymes are said to raise the splinter so you can remove it more easily.

House & Garden

7. Polish Leather & Silver. Rub the banana peel on the item and buff with a cloth. Hmm…test it on older shoes before trying it with the Louboutins.

8. Fertilize Plants. Instead of tossing the banana peels, dry them and grind them into an excellent mulch for seedlings and young plants. Some say that the peels can also fight off aphids. But as one member of a gardening forum added to the conversation thread, “About the only way a banana peel would eliminate aphids would be if you placed the aphids on a flat surface and beat them with it.”

Bananas growing on the tree. Photo by Sergio Roberto | SXC.

In The Kitchen

9. Dog Treat. Bananas are a perfectly safe, and perfectly healthy, treat for your beloved pooch!

10. Make “Soft Serve.” Turn those extra bananas into a healthful and lower calorie approximation of soft serve ice cream. Make as much as you plan to eat at one time.

 
BANANA TRIVIA

The banana “tree” is actually a jumbo perennial herb with huge leaves. The word “banana” is derived from the Arab word for finger, “banan,” referring to the fact that the bananas in a bunch look like fingers.

Enjoy more banana trivia and the history of bananas.

“Summertime is about simplicity,” says TV chef and “Chopped” judge Alex Guarnaschelli, as she shared these summer dessert ideas with us (originally published in The Daily Meal).

A strawberry ice cream pie, topped with sugar-dipped strawberries. Photo courtesy Miki’s Recipes. Get the recipe.

“All of a sudden,” says Guarnaschelli, “you’ve created this whole new universe, and yet it’s so easy.”

Here’s another recipe for a Strawberry Daiquiri Cocktail Pie from Miki’s Recipes.

Donut sandwiches are the new ice cream sandwich. Photo courtesy Schwan’s.

We love ice cream sandwiches. We typically make ours with chocolate chip cookies or sliced pound cake.

But these ideas from Schwan’s have us thinking in new directions. You can whip them up and serve them immediately, or store them in the freezer.

GARNISH YOUR ICE CREAM SANDWICH

You can add another layer of flavor before sealing with the top sandwich layer:

 
You can roll the ice cream edges in sprinkles, mini chips or confetti (as shown in the photo).

Whatever you do, you’ll have fun.

If you’d like to have these treats delivered to you, visit the Schwan’s website.

Photo courtesy Schwan’s.

Bloody Mary ice pops. Photo by Elvira
Kalviste | THE NIBBLE.

Yesterday we proposed diet ice pops, made from diet fruit soda.

This time, it’s serious: Bloody Mary ice pops.

You can turn any juice-based cocktail into an ice pop. We especially like Bloody Mary ice pops because they have no sugar (guilt free!) and because the kick of spices in the ice is very refreshing indeed.

 
Of course, you can also make Virgin Mary ice pops. They’re equally delicious.

Whether pop or slushie, enjoy!