Scoop Friday: Handel’s - Birthday Cake
The United States of America, now that you’re over the hill at 250 and most likely past your prime, it’s time to honor you on this Scoop Friday like a celebrity has-been with a display of admiration and abhorrence of your controversial past with one our country’s finest, age-old traditions: a roast!
Like many of the mighty empires throughout human history, you expanded your borders meteorically through grueling war victories and shrewd land purchases. Thankfully, for the sake of your prosperity, the bodies of opportunistic immigrants, the poor, and the enslaved were all expendable! Plus, you were a cheeky devil for making all those treaties with Native tribes just an ignorable suggestion.
Your entertainment industry has captivated audiences across the globe with epic cinematic experiences on the silver screen, delightful episodic adventures on the small screen, and porn parodies of the two on the phone screen.
USA, I’d be remiss to not say thank you. Without unhealthy treats being as ubiquitous as firearms, Scoop Friday would be quite an arduous affair to put together. For centuries, Americans have been given the right to enjoy classic iced cream flavors like Noose Tracks, Rocky Trail (of Tears), Mizz. Compromise Chip, and Cherries JubiWoundedKnee or modern flavors including Mass Shooti Frutti, Pedstachio, and Lockheed Martin’s Maple Pebomb.
Happy Birthday United States of America! Despite your countless flaws (several I couldn’t cover in this abridged version for the sake of my readers’ time), I’m proud to be an American where at least I know I’m free (for now) to write a blog roasting you.
To properly celebrate Scoop Friday on the eve of our country’s 250th birthday, I drove down to York, Pennsylvania, one of the nation’s early capitals and the setting of where the Articles of Confederation were drafted. Since the Founding Fathers roamed its streets two and a half centuries ago, the city of York has developed into a seedier habitat for ne’er-do-wells. However, its passion for ice cream remains resilient. That’s why I decided to check out one of the area’s favorite parlors: Handel’s Homemade Ice Cream. Eighty-one years ago, Handel’s started in Youngstown, Ohio, but now has over 150 locations spread across the country. While I typically prefer to support and review local small businesses, franchises are one of the many vertebrae that make up America’s backbone. They’re specifically found in the lumbar section along with football, health insurance debt, corruption, and a meretricious $70,000 truck commercial narrated by a domestic abusing mixed martial arts CEO that panders with explicit jingoism.
We’ve been sac’in rum since the days of prohibition!
I examined their flavor board but didn’t notice any forced patriotically-named flavors like Red White and Blueberry or any of the other aforementioned flavors from the roast. However, with it being the week of my country’s birthday, I decided to order a flavor that felt like a suitable choice for the occasion: Birthday Cake. Unfortunately, the cashier informed me they did not have candles to add the standard waxy residue or paper plates, the typical serving apparatus for birthday cake. I ended up selecting a medium cone for $5.35. I haven’t ordered a cone all summer, so I was excited to finally try a couple of scoops in their customary format. I quickly regretted this choice.
As I exited the shaded ordering area and walked back to my car parked under the blazing sun, I started to admire the company’s logo on the cone pouch featuring a cherry as a substitute for the apostrophe. Suddenly, I felt a couple drops of liquid trickle onto my hand. My worst nightmare was coming true: my ice cream was rapidly melting. As my treat continued to cascade from my index finger to my pinky, I belatedly remembered the forecast calling for temperatures as hot as Death Valley or former U.S. President William H. Taft in a polkadot bikini. At the expense of savoring its flavor, I started vigorously licking the cone as my pace accelerated into a brisk jog. I pushed my car’s start button and cranked up the AC to its max setting. Fortunately, outside of a stain on my shorts that looked like bird poop, enough of cone’s contents remained to formulate a proper judgment of it.
Now, that’s a cone I’d like to lick!
As someone who loves ice cream cake, you would think that this would be a match made in heaven, but you’d be wrong as my perplexing pallet usually finds non-cake items flavored like cake to be underwhelming and miss the mark. With low expectations, I took my first intentional lick. Surprisingly, I enjoyed the ice cream on its own with a taste reminiscent of funfetti batter. Although, I was not a fan of sporadic icing ripples scattered throughout it. When I got down to the cone portion, for some odd reason, the combination of this cake-flavored dairy and wheat produced a Lucky Charms-like taste. I’m a big cereal guy (Spoon Friday next spring!), but apparently, I’m not a big cereal ice cream guy. Nevertheless, even with sticky fingers and an unexpected laundry date with spray n’ wash coming up, I still found it to be more delightful than your average birthday-cake-flavored treat.