Making ice cream is fun, no doubt. From making a cozy pint laced with your favorite toppings to whipping up 6 quarts to host a dinner party, the aim is to feed people with a delicious frozen treat.
When you are eating by yourself, you can usually get away with eating it out of the ice cream bowl or any old container you can, but what happens though when you have to serve it up for guests? Especially when it is a large party and you have run out of finger bowls or china saucers?
What happens when you make just too much ice cream at a time? You are left with either eating it all (and end up feeling bloated), or storing it in your freezer for next time. The problem with this is that because this is home made ice cream, there are no preservatives in it. This will lead to the ice cream freezing solid and unfit to eat. It will stick to the sides of the steel or plastic bowls, leading to formation of ice crystals in your dessert, and ultimately that batch ends up in the bin.
These problems can be solved by the use of ice cream cups. These can be either made of heavy paper or plastic. They may also come with lids or to be used once and disposed of. These handy kitchen ‘gadgets’ can hold anywhere from 3 oz to 12 oz. You can buy them in packs of 10 and 20.
You need to ensure that you are buying the laminated heavy paper ones, as the lighter ones will disintegrate as they hold liquid for longer. As earlier stated, others are made of plastic. With the fear of BPA in plastics that some people have, this ma#y not be a good idea for them.
I particularly love the paper ones that come in a plain white color. I get the kids to whip out crayons and Sharpies to design each cup when we have dinner guests. Scribbling their favorite characters, their interpretation of the person who will use the cup is always a riot. They are a topic of discussion and a welcome addition to dinner parties, days out at the park, tailgating, barbecue parties etc.
Your kids will have fun decorating the cups in preparation for the dinner. If they are having parties of their own, they can even invite friends over to color the cups as a fun exercise, covering the blank white canvas of the cup with wonderful designs and color them to make totally unique.
The cups come with plastic tops that fit nice and very snug. The lid has 2 small holes on two opposite sides of it, but don’t worry, there is a paperboard insert under the lid that covers these up and keeps the container air-tight when in the freezer.
The double layered composition of the cup helps keep your contents at the right temperature. The lid is designed designed to be leak resistant and airtight. These cups come in quart and pint sizes. Super useful for storing ice cream, these paper cups are also multifunctional as you can use them to store soup or chilli too. Buy one pack or buy three packs, you will always find a use for them.
Dinner over? Your guests are raving about your dessert? Well, these cups can be used to send everyone off with a little nightcap of your ice cream.
Delivery from Amazon is swift and they come well packed and protected, so you don’t have to worry about them being crushed in transit.
Quick Tip – I found that it is much easier to label and write one each one before I place them in the freezer. If I don’t, the condensation that will form on the cup when I bring it out, wont let me write on the cup.
So there you have it, a multifunctional, environmentally-friendly and fun solution to the problem of wasting precious ice cream.
Enjoy, folks!!
Photo Credit: ice cream cup
