h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My main memory of childhood ice-creams is always making sure I kept the last inch of any cone, with some ice-cream in it, for our . Trouble was, I was so eager to give him this treat that invariably I broke the end off the cone before I'd even started to eat it, meaning that the ice-cream slowly dribbled out of the bottom and covered my arm...

My friend used to have a cat who would always come out to the ice-cream van with him and wait in the queue.

Lbclaire (boring old vanilla ice-cream fan!)

don't really have enough experience for my views to be considered 'childhood' memories, but so far I remain a *loyal* fan to the strawbwrry flavoured kinds...

I was in a different city at the weekend and spent several hours in a park playing Diablo (-a rounded object thats spun on string-)but its the most fun thing to do, ive been doing it for about 7 years,i was with some friends and it got quite sweaty, so we walked along the river in the park and found an ice cream van, obvioulsy tucking in to the delights of a cool ice cream on a swealtering day, so i got the old cone adn dribble with flake combo, wandered back into the park and perched under a huge old tree, after starting to eat it, i fell naturally back into a habbit of the way you eat those things, lick the thing into a cone shape then when its low down squish it into the actual cone then use your tongue to get all the ice cream out of the little rivets around the edge then MUNCH!

- Peace the the east -

In my opinion the best part of a Cornetto is the little bit of chocolate you get at the bottom of the cone.

I still love my ice cream as gloop. As a child I always used to mash it up in a bowl and wait until it was fairly runny. To this very day I like nothing better than top-quality vanilla ice cream allowed to melt into a gloopy mess in a bowl and then eaten like a soup (crusty bread optional ). Then I used to give my bowl to the cat to clean.

Best ice cream I know is from Aberaeron, just up the Welsh coast from me. I grew up with a fairly limited range of ice cream flavours, so when I went to the little shop next to the sea there and saw the range on offer I nearly fainted. Now, when I look back, it was a pretty ordinary selection, with your standard coffee, mint choc chip and coffee, et cetera, but I had grown up with either vanilla or chocolate on offer. All the ice cream there is made with honey, which not only makes it beautifully sweet but also gives it a really smooth, creamy texture.

When I was on work experience with an architect a couple of years ago, he took me to Aberaeron to see a building site. This was the last day of my stay, and so far it had been pretty boring. The highlight of the whole week was the ice cream he bought me at the end of it.

That just reminded me of a fantastic ice-cream 'recipe' I used to make myself when I was a teenager.

Take a kit kat and break it into pieces in a bowl. Then put it into the microwave until the chocolate melts, then mash it up. Put some vanilla ice-cream, just out of the freezer, into another bowl and spoon the melted kit kat on top. After leaving it for a few minutes, the ice-cream would be lovely and soft and the kit kat hardened again into a crunchy topping.

Lbclaire (having an ice-cream party with friends tonight! )

Mmmm, sounds great! And that in turn reminds me of something I still do now.

Ice cream. With cream. Ultimate in decadence. Pour on just a little cream and it solidifies on the cold ice cream so you get a sort of cream crust. Then I put honey and walnuts on top of that.

When I was a youngster the only ice cream we could readily get was Tom Walls' and the only flavour was vanilla. The ice cream was shaped like a brick and was nearly as hard.

I still remember the first time I tried proper homemade Italian ice-cream from a local cafe. There was no going back to yellow soft scoop after that. My secret passion is for ice magic, the chocolate sauce that sets hard after a few minutes. Full of preservatives and rubbish no doubt, by fab nevertheless.

he he I used to just melt galaxy and pour it onto vanilla ice cream, and it hardens but slightly gooey...bliss :D

Ooh, ice magic!! I'd forgotten all about that. I used to pour it on really thick when my parents weren't looking!

Lbclaire

Italian ice-cream is just the best in the world, isn't it FamousFi?

I won't mention the ice-cream the size of a house that DannyB and I had in Florence last year - didn't even look at the price before I chose it and we swore each other to secrecy when we found out...

Lbclaire

I could never decide if I liked it best when the ice magic had set or was still runny so I usually had two lots .

Do you remember the really naff advert for it? Of a mountain top of ice magic being "cracked" by a spoon?

Ooh but Lbclaire your the-size-of-a-house ice cream sounds wonderful. I'm hungry now. Do you have a favorite flavour?

Yes - that was a rather naff advert, but it obviously worked on us!!

I have to admit to being boring and loving vanilla, but of the 'newfangled' types of ice cream, Haagen Daas Pralines and Cream is one I could eat a whole tub of, no problem at all. Ben & Jerry's used to do a similar one called Rainforest Crunch, but I haven't seen it around for a few years .

I quite like strawberry and mint choc chip, but I hate things like rum and raisin, and I've never really been a chocolate ice-cream fan, though I'm a huge fan - too sickly for me.

Lbclaire

I am surprised nobody has mentioned "Stop me and Buy one" and the Walls pedalled tricycle from which the uniformed salesman dispensed "Walls Icecream Bricks - 9d (double size 1/6),Walls Icecream brickettes - 2d, Walls Icecream tubs -4d, Walls Chocolate coated Icecream Bars 4d, Walls Snofrute (pure fruit juices, Pasturised and frozen in moulds - 1d."

Hi mhbrbl. See post 7. I had no idea my weekly wafer cost all of 0/2d. No wonder my parents pretended to be deaf with 4 kids demanding ice cream.
There was also the Corona Man - remember him?