Ice Cream Cones

The weather has been pretty glorious in the UK over the past week (apart from some rain today of course). I've made some pretty delicious ice creams previously (see my cookies & cream ice cream, salted caramel ice cream, and honeycomb and coffee meringue ice creams) but haven't ever tried to make the wafers to go with them.
A while back I purchased an ice cream cone maker to make Stroopwafels (see my recipe here) and thought I'd have a go at making some ice cream cones.

The trick to make the cones is to work very quickly as soon as they are off the pan - as they cool, they become really crisp!
I used an ice cream cone mould, which is the white cone-shaped instrument in the picture above. If you don't have one, you could fashion one out of a piece of card, and fill it with foil to keep its shape.
Alternatively, you could mould the waffle over the base of a glass or small bowl, and make cool looking ice cream cups - I'll have to give that a go next time I make them!

The recipe is really simple - the longest part is waiting for the waffle maker to heat up.

Oh, if you don't have a waffle maker, you could try using a hot frying pan (like you would cook pancakes) - I haven't tried this myself but I've seen others get good results doing this.

These are best eaten the day you make them.

Makes 5 big ice cream cones

Ingredients:

• 1 tsp butter, for greasing the hotplate
• 25g (2 tbsp) butter, melted
• 100g (3/4 cup + 2 tsp) plain flour
• 50g (1/4 cup) caster sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 egg white
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 pinch of salt
• 2 tbsp milk

Method:

1. Plug your ice cream cone maker in and start to preheat it. Mine took around 10 minutes, so get this going first!

2. Pour all of the ingredients, except the 1 tsp butter, into a bowl, and whisk until smooth. Set aside for at least 5 minutes to rest.

3. Once the hotplate has finished preheating, add the teaspoon of the butter to the hotplate. Add 1&1/2 tbsp of the batter to the centre of the hotplate.

4. Close the lid and press down. Cook for 3 minutes - depending on your machine and the exact amount of batter this can vary. Open the lid - you want a nice golden colour. If the first wafer is very brown, decrease the time you cook the next one to 2 & 1/2 minutes. If the wafer is still pale, press the lid down again and cook for another 30 seconds.

5. Use a spatula to carefully remove the wafer from the hotplate. Working quickly, wrap the wafer around the ice cream cone mould (or glass base, or bowl, as mentioned above). Hold for a few seconds until it cools slightly. It will cool very quickly.

6. Once cool to the touch, remove from the mould. If you make the cones and end up with a hole in the bottom, place a bit of marshmallow in the bottom. This will stop ice cream leakage!

7. Repeat with the remaining cones.

8. Fill with your favourite ice cream.

9. Enjoy!