"sundae" news and stories

Happy National Sundae Day!

Although today the dessert is hardly limited to any day of the week, the sundae was initially named for leisurely Sundays. According to lore, the sundae originated in 1892 in Ithaca, New York, at a little pharmacy soda fountain that was mostly patronized on Sundays, when the more popular hotel bar across the street was closed. When one patron complained about the carbonation in the ice cream soda, he was served a "dry" ice cream soda, with just ice cream and syrup. This pairing later became known as the "Sunday Special," but was abbreviated to the simple "sundae," with an adjusted spelling to respect the Sabbath.

Today the term "sundae" liberally cloaks nearly any dessert featuring ice cream, syrup and a plethora of additions, from cherries, chocolate and bananas, to brownies, pastries and more. How do you take your sundae? Share your sundae specials with us in the comments!

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Some types of kids will eat the icing off the birthday cake and leave the moist, denuded slab of cake lying dead on the plate. They'll pull the crispy bits off the fried chicken and leave the meaty carcass behind.

I was the other kind of kid, the one who ate her treats slowly, methodically, from the worst to the best. I could spend half an hour on a Twix bar, nibbling off the greasy, slightly grainy chocolate from the top and sides before separating the cookie from the thick, soft strip of caramel, which I'd roll into a ball and eat last. Give me Lucky Charms and I'd eat every last bit of soggy, Styrofoam puff cereal until I had an entire bowl full of marshmallows. I'd marvel gleefully at my bounty before digging in with a soup spoon, the marshmallows slippery as minnows in my mouth.

This culinary deconstructionism and best-for-last attitude explains my affection for the Drumstick. First comes the nuts, to be picked off one by one with your front teeth. Then the shattery chocolate shell, to be broken and removed piece-by-piece. Next, the globe of sweet, bland vanilla ice cream, to be licked to nothingness in a precise spiral pattern. The chocolate-lined cone would be eaten in a spiral pattern too, with overlapping rows of tiny, neat bites.

And there, hidden at the very bottom, was a solid cone of chocolate. I'd still be savoring the melting lump in my mouth even after I'd washed the stickiness off my hands and settled in to watch the Smurfs.

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It has been a while since A Passion for Ice Cream was our cookbook of the day, but this post marks the second time that a recipe from it has been featured here, providing ample evidence that the recipes in the book come out looking as fantastic at home as they do in the book, not to mention that its continued popularity among other food bloggers seems to indicate that the recipes taste as good as they look. This is the Cho Cho Cho brownie sundae, as constructed by Anita of Dessert First. The recipe calls for a fudgy chocolate brownie to be topped with a scoop of white chocolate ice cream and drizzled with chocolate sauce. The presentation is simple and elegant, an easy one to recreate at home and a nice way to spruce up some brownies. If the triple chocolate combination sounds a bit too rich, you can do what Anita did and substitute vanilla ice cream for the white chocolate.

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A battle over where and when the ice cream sundae originated is heating up. The two American cities fighting to lay claim to inventing the treat have taken out ads in each other's local newspapers. One resident even mailed an inflatable cow to the mayor of his rival city.

Two Rivers, Wis., says that it concocted the sundae first in 1881 after a customer asked Edward C. Berners, the owner of a downtown soda fountain, to spoon a little chocolate sauce over ice cream. According to local lore, Berners began selling the new treat on Sundays.

Ithaca, N.Y., for its part, says it invented the sundae in 1892. Naturally, the city has its own folksy myth, too. As the story goes, the syrup covering the first sundae was not chocolate, but cherry. A local priest asked for vanilla ice cream with cherry syrup capped with a dark candied cherry and suggested that the dessert be named after the day.

Each town has historical markers devoted to the sundae. Two Rivers seem most passionate about the cause though. It was one of that city's residents who mailed the inflatable cow. Ithaca, for its part, said in a proclamation that people in Two Rivers are "great storytellers." As the cheeseheads like to say, "Uff da!"

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If eight decadent ice cream sundae options aren't enough for you, you might want to consider a copy of Serendipity Sundaes: Ice Cream Constructions and Frozen Concoctions. The book is the second title released by the ice cream magicians at New York's famous Serendipity 3, one of the city's most popular dessert destinations. All the recipes give you instructions for how to make your own versions of their enormous sundaes (and other treats) at home. There are recipes for ice cream and sauces, but the bulk of the recipes are more "construction" oriented, which means that the book can be appreciated by anyone who's ever bought a carton of ice cream. Of course, the illustrations might tempt you to go out and purchase a few more cartons of ice cream than you originally intended to, so do be careful!

Epicurious has a link to a Breakfast Sundae from the book involving oatmeal, fruit and ice cream, which sounds odd by probably tastes good, since I know many people who add cream to their oatmeal anyway. All the same, I think that it's the sweeter treats that make the book.

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