Scoop Friday: Dairy Queen – Vanilla Dipped in Chocolate
The autumn winds blow chilly and cold. The brisk gusts signify that the end of the inaugural Scoop Friday season is nigh. Do my faithful fans deserve a finale featuring greater pomp and circumstance than a relatively basic cone from one of the largest ice cream chains in America? Perhaps. However, this is the go-to cone of one of my most avid advocates that went above and beyond the other Ev Dog Blog enthusiasts by genetically gifting me with her ice-cream-loving sweet tooth thirty years ago. Thank you mom! Without this helado-based heredity, I’d probably be wrapping up my first season of Tapioca Tuesday.
To celebrate our shared scoop appreciation, we met at our local Dairy Queen in New Cumberland. Neighboring a bustling stogie store, a disheveled Dollar Tree, a sleazeball- alluring “spa”, and an extensive row of dark empty units longing for their own uncouth customer base, this DQ location shines as the crown jewel of the Fairview Plaza. With three minutes to spare before the lobby closed, we quickly ordered my mom’s favorite before heading back out to her car to devour our desserts and reminisce about cones from days gone by.
My mother recalled some of her favorite frozen treat memories from the past fifty-plus years involving this particular cone. Back in the day, it softly served in the role as both a post-high-school-hijinks highlight and a successful stop on a surreptitious sugar session with my grandpa, Pappy, that my Grandma Helen would have knowingly disapproved of due to supper-spoiling concerns. I recollected on the times from my Little League days when no matter if we won or lost (This damn participation trophy ice cream generation!), I’d sporadically be rewarded with a post-game snack of some new candy-centric blizzard flavor that was advertised during the Fairy OddParents ad breaks earlier in the week.
Donna Dog sharing cones with and interviewing Running Back Franco Harris about his go-to-post-game Dairy Queen order.
I myself am fairly familiar with this vanilla cone dipped in chocolate as well as I’ve ordered it on occasion during my previous visits Dairy Queen over the past decade. The warm chocolate embraces the cold vanilla like an unwanted but necessary snug winter jacket that the white swirl would rather take off to keep up its cool appearance with its fellow ice cream friends. Still, the two differing textures complement each other well. The symbiotic relationship between their distinct flavors further enhances the tag team’s effectiveness.
The soft serve itself tastes exactly the same as it did twenty years ago. It offers no revolutionary or mind-blowing licks, but it’s still above average for soft serve. Sadly, in this day and age, I must commend the Dairy Queen C-Suite for not cheapening their product out completely and still understanding the concept of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”
On a more regular basis than Dairy Queen, my mom has always been there for me after both the wins and the losses I’ve experienced in life. In recent years, I’ve taken her support for granted, but now it warms my heart every week when I receive a text from my ice-cream-loving mama that details the element from the review that she found most amusing. I love you mom! While the weenies, who consider the winter too cold to consume ice cream, tuck away their pints of pistachio deep in their freezer until next May, we’ll continue to enjoy our scoops all year long in both subzero temperatures and snowy conditions!
#BuiltDifferent
Everyone (sorry for calling some of y’all weenies), thank you for all the love and supportive messages you’ve sent me over the past few months! This summer, I had a blast with both eating lots of different ice cream flavors and writing about their corresponding adventures. We’ll see Scoop Fridays return in six months.
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