Soft Serve Twist in a Cone With Sprinkles
How I became an ice cream fiend
The town I grew up in didn’t have a Dairy Queen — it had a Dairy King instead. I thought most people grew up with a DK instead of a DQ, but it took me until adulthood to realize that we were the weird ones.
I’m definitely biased, but Dairy King was (and is) better than Dairy Queen. Not that I don’t enjoy a loaded Blizzard every now and then, but the ice cream shop I grew up with had a lot more charm than your average DQ.
It’s kind of a legendary spot in the Metro Detroit area. The business, which operates out of a yellow house with a signature black awning and walk-up windows, has been open for 76 years. There’s a line out the door every night in the summer. And somehow I got completely spoiled growing up just a 10 minute drive away.
Dairy King serves just about every kind of ice cream you can imagine, from soft serve cones to sundaes to top-tier Guernsey scoops. After many years of going there, I honed down my orders to three perfect options:
A single scoop of Mackinac Island Fudge in a waffle cone
A single scoop of Peanut Butter Mackinac Island Fudge in a waffle cone
A soft serve chocolate-vanilla twist in a cake cone with rainbow sprinkles.
Very rarely have I strayed from those three choices since high school. (And when I have, it hasn’t been a total disappointment, but rather an I-wish-I-stuck-with-one-of-my-old-standbys type of situation.)
I live nowhere near Dairy King anymore, but my fond memories of the place have me fiending for ice cream every summer. Just ask Ryan — he’s the one I ask to get a cone with me every other night once the temps get above 70 degrees.
Summer isn’t my favorite season, but I can tolerate it if there’s ice cream involved. A few years ago, I cross stitched a patch for my backpack that says “it’s always time for ice cream.” And that’s true, but summer is really when I need my cold, sweet treat the most.
Thankfully there are two nice, seasonal ice cream places near us, but neither will ever top Dairy King. One place in town specializes in soft serve and flurries, and the other has a wide variety of hard scoops and tasty waffle cones. So at least we have options.
My one gripe with the soft serve place is that they don’t do sprinkles. I can get a chocolate-vanilla twist in a cone, but can’t get sprinkles on it for some reason. That’s always bothered me, since the highlight of soft serve ice cream is the sprinkles.
Every year I think about getting a small jar of my own sprinkles and bringing it with me to the ice cream place. Like, putting it in a little holster on my belt so I can whip it out and garnish my cone as often as I’d like.
Rainbow sprinkles ignite this childish sense of joy in me. I can’t really explain it, but whenever I see that type of sprinkle on any kind of dessert — ice cream cone, cookie, cupcake, etc. — it automatically makes the treat look 200% more delicious. Sprinkles don’t taste like much, but the fun colors make them seem like they’d elevate even the simplest of desserts.
It’s more the optics than the actual flavor, but my brain is thoroughly convinced that soft serve ice cream needs sprinkles in order to taste good. I’ll still get a chocolate-vanilla twist cone in the summer, but the ones near me just don’t taste as good as the ones I’d get at Dairy King. I’m certain the quality of ice cream is the same — I just need my sprinkles!
As for hard scoops, I’m thankful that there is a place near me that has Mackinac Island Fudge. I was worried that would only be a Michigan flavor before I moved to Wisconsin, but they seem to have it most places here. However, my local ice cream shop doesn’t always have Peanut Butter Mackinac Island Fudge, which is arguably a better flavor than the original.
Even though I can’t get exactly the kinds of cones I grew up with, I will say that ice cream sundaes have been growing on me. The place around here that serves hard scoops also makes great sundaes, and Ryan and I love to split them because it’s a LOT of treat in one sitting.
All this ice cream talk makes me crave summer even more. Our soft serve place is opening this week (YAY) so I know warmer weather is right around the corner.
What are your favorite seasonal treats? Tell me about it in the comments or send me an email reply!
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Can relate to the DK withdrawal!! Ice cream from anywhere else is also good but just never quite the same!
I have a similar respect and nostalgia for Cedar Crest Ice Cream Plant & Parlor. My family called it The Big Cow, because there's literally a giant cow statue out front. I always ordered sherbert ice cream (3 flavors in one = a good deal) or bubble gum (a blue ice cream with pieces of bubble gum in it = basically a whole meal). And since we never went anywhere else for ice cream , I didn't realize neither of those flavors are easy to find anywhere else.
My mom's favorite ice cream flavor was always raspberry, and as an adult I developed a similar love for treats that balance sweetness with tartness or bitterness: dark chocolate, strawberry-rhubarb pie, lemon bars, and goat cheesecake.
I always wait too long for the "perfect" summer day to get ice cream, which means I barely ever get ice cream. But when I do, it's from a little mobile ice cream truck that has both vegan and regular ice cream. Their black cherry flavor has small pieces of cherry in it that really elevate the experience.