National Ice Cream Month: Ice Cream Cone Rice Krispie Treats and A Sweet Shop Themed Baby Shower

I have been saving this post for July because it is National Ice Cream Month! I think ice cream is the best food on this Earth. It is hands down my favorite food.

Why do I love ice cream?

• I love how many flavors there are. I’m currently crushing on the Kroger Private Selection Chocolate Éclair ice cream. I have only seen it in the little pints, but its amazing. If you live in a town with a Kroger store (sorry Idaho friends), you should go buy some right now.
• I love to make homemade ice cream and invent my own flavors. CLICK HERE to see some of my recipes.
• I love cute little ice cream shops. Columbus has some of the best ice cream shops in the world. If you ever visit Columbus, make certain you visit Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream. It’s the number one in the nation.
• I love the occasional date night run to the grocery store for a container of ice cream and a redbox movie.
• I love how stinkin cute ice cream cones are.

Remember when I made these cookies?

See…ice cream cones are cute!

Back in the dead of winter I threw a baby shower for a friend. I went with the whole “Sweet Shop” theme. I am not the best at decorating and I don’t really love it, so I decided that it would be easiest to have the food be the decorations by choosing the Sweet Shop theme. I’m kind of a cheap party thrower. I borrowed almost everything I used, except the food. I borrowed the ice cream garland, the chalk board, the mini chalk boards, the polka dot pitcher, the table runners, the fancy dish for the doughnut holes, and the dish for the strawberries. A friend made the adorable garland for the chalk board and I got the giant cupcake cookie jar and ice cream cone cups from the thrift store for a couple bucks!

Here are some pictures from the shower:

I kept the décor simple in the front room and just hung this cute ice cream cone garland. Its basically yarn that has been all glued around Styrofoam balls and attached to ice cream cones.

Confession: this isn’t my house. This is my neighbors house and its way cuter than my house. I mean just look at that awesome pillow! I planned and set up the party, but she let me use her house. I set up a little gift table in the front room. There is a cute little chalk board sign behind the gifts that says… “Gifts”… or something obvious like that.

When you walk into the dinning room, you see this cute chalk board:

Directly underneath the chalk board is the “sweet shop”:

Like I said before, I got that awesome cupcake cookie jar the thrift store for a couple dollars. Of course its chuck full of all different kinds of soft cookies! I scattered jars of candy all around the table for good measure. And don’t you just love the cute mini chalk boards that I borrowed?

I had a friend (Thanks Becca!) make these scrumptious chocolate covered strawberries. She claims that the secret is using Trader Joe’s chocolate and tempering it. They are seriously THE BEST chocolate covered strawberries in the world! Maybe someday I will get her to do a guest post.

Doughnut holes.

Sugar Cookie Lolly Pops. I made these a few days early so I could concentrate on everything else on the day of the shower. They are a little sloppy because I was rushing and wasn’t being careful at all. I still think they turned out very cute. If you would like to learn how to make sugar cookies using royal icing, CLICK HERE FOR MY FULL TUTORIAL.

Cupcakes!!! I am ashamed (but not too ashamed) to admit that I doctored up a strawberry cake mix and topped them with cream cheese frosting and sixlets. I got the cupcake liners at Wal-Mart in the cake decorating section. I love them because they are grease resistant and don’t loose their color while baking. I’m not the best cupcake froster, but I used a large circle piping tip.

Here is the little drink stand. I served water and milk (to go with the cookies). The cups and straws were from the target dollar section and the plates and napkins were from Walmart. The ice cream cone cups were from the thrift store (50 cents baby!).

I also made these super easy and adorable ice cream cone rice krispie treats. Here’s how I made them:

Start with your ice cream cones. I found these really cute mini ice cream cones. They are about two inches tall and are just so cute! You could use any type of cone, though. I set them in a mini muffin tin to stabilize them. Fill each cone with candy. It was just after Valentines Day when I was planning this little shindig, so I found pink and white M&M’s for half off because they were considered Valentine’s Day candy.

Next, make your rice krispie treats. Just use your favorite recipe. I made mine with pink strawberry flavored marshmallows. These were also post Valentine’s goodies, so I got them for almost free. If you want a fun color but are using plain marshmallows, just add a drop or two of food coloring after the marshmallows melt, but before you mix in the cereal. Transfer the hot gooey goodness out of the pot and into a shallow container.

Line a baking sheet with parchment or wax paper. For this next step, you will want to use a spring loaded cookie dough scoop for the mini cones and a spring loaded ice cream scoop for normal size cones. Use the cookie dough scoop to gather the rice krispie treats. With clean hands, press the cereal into the scoop so it forms to the shape of the scoop.

Add a little bit more cereal around the edge of the scoop. Like this:

Squeeze the scooper to release the cereal ice cream. 

Top with some sort of candy. I used pink Sixlets. I got a huge tub of them in the bulk candy section of Giant Eagle Market District. If you can find bulk candy somewhere, then I’m sure you could find some sort of little round topper. I have also seen little packets of Sixlets in the baking isle at Wal-Mart in various cute colors. Since I made cookies with royal icing around the same time, I used that to secure the Sixlets to the rice krispie treats. But, you probably wont want to make up a whole big batch of royal icing just to glue these candies. So just melt some white chocolate chips and use that as glue. Here’s and idea: color the white chocolate and let is spread out a little on top of the ice cream to make it look like some sort of ice cream topping.

Now wasn’t that easy? Wouldn’t these cute little ice cream cones be a fun surprise for your kids to celebrate ice cream month?

Happy July!!!! May it be full of ice cream!

By Edible Experiments