Sunday, June 2, 2013

Cone Dip

I am a fairly frequent visitor to Dairy Queen. I remember the days before the "Blizzard" gained popularity. It was on the menu but not many knew about it. There was also a product called the "Freeze" that was a more liquid version of the same thing. It's no longer available.

It's important to know the depths to which my chocolaholism takes me. My standard DQ order is an Oreo Blizzard, made with chocolate ice cream mind you, with an extra ingredient - chocolate cone dip.

This is the meth-level craving-buster I order when I get shaky from eating healthy all day. Usually sushi puts me over the edge. It's so...fishy and ricey.

The new summer crew is staffing the local DQ. Personnel change each summer as you might imagine when school lets out, and several times during the summer when the kids find out how awful customer service/food jobs can be. So the girl at the counter was new, and most likely has never dipped anything but a cone. I will not use the word "dip" in any other way in this story, albeit a profound temptation.

"Large Oreo Blizzard, made with chocolate ice cream..." I ordered.

"Chocolate ice cream?"

"Yes," I said, as she punched extra keys on the register.

"And chocolate cone dip."

She looked up, then back at the register, and pressed far too many keys.

"That will be $13.49," she said, smiling sheepishly as if to say, please don't use a credit card, because I don't know how to do that.

I waited, puzzled by the high cost of my order and watched the proceedings in the food prep area. Counter girl went back to help, swirling a football sized chocolate cone and dipping it upside down in the cone dip container.

At this point I must say, I've always been fascinated by the quickly solidifying hard shell and the magic by which ice cream defies gravity, seemingly glued to an inverted crunchy wafer cone.

She brought her giant creation over to a boy in the prep area and proudly displayed what she had made for him. He looked puzzled, glanced at my order on the overhead display and shook his head. He escorted her back to the cone dip container with a smaller version of the same thing, dipped and returned to his station. She returned to the counter somewhat deflated.

In a few moments prep boy came to the front counter with my order. There in a standard large Blizzard cup was an entire chocolate dipped soft serve cone protruding like a Beehive hairdo above the rim. I could only imagine that the entire crunchy wafer cone was submerged in chocolate ice cream and crumbled Oreo bits, but under the pressure of the moment I could focus only on the mutant creation sitting on the counter between us.

I choked back a laugh and simply asked, "What is THAT?"

Prep boy looked down at what his arms and hands had led him to assemble, obvious at this point that his brain had become completely disengaged in the process. He did his best to explain.

"Oreo Blizzard...with a chocolate cone dipped."

I apologize for not taking a picture of this one-of-a-kind treat. I doubt it has ever been attempted before, and probably never will be again. Suffice it to say, I gently redirected the production and left with the order as intended. The owner got involved, refunding much of my money when she saw the number of items that had been rung up by counter girl.

Laughing most of the way home where I planned to lapse into cone-dip ecstasy and a subsequent state of lethargy, I rationalized my experience thusly: for the cost of a DQ Blizzard, I received a delicious ice cream creation, a number of good laughs, a great story and this blog post.

It's gonna be a long summer.