Today is the meteorological beginning of spring. We’ve had 24 degrees here in Cologne. Unfortunately, I am cooped up at home, curled up on the couch beneath a blanket and coughing out my lungs when I’m not blowing my nose or drinking tea. I’ve been under the weather for a second time in a short while now and I hope that I can beat the germs this time around.

Around the city, I know without having seen so myself, people were lounging on every lawn in every public green area and there were ridiculously long queues in front of every single ice-cream parlor, regardless of the quality of their ice-cream. I used to love to visit Eis Engeln with my husband, a traditional little ice-cream parlor, which only makes down-to-earth flavors, and has been making them so since 1953. Whenever a list of the best ice-cream parlors in Cologne is compiled, they always rank in the first few spots. It’s absolutely deserved. Their ice-cream is awfully sweet, but also incredibly creamy and bursting with flavor. I can never resist taking less than three flavors and my husband always has to finish my cone for me. I’ve not been back to Eis Engeln since the fall of 2012, but I will make a point of going there soon in order to explore which of their flavours (if any) are gluten-free.

I’ve been bored out of my mind here at home, and due to the gorgeous weather, also craving ice-cream and ice cream cones. I’ve been meaning to try out the new waffle iron I bought late last fall, and since it’s a fairly easy endeavor, I got up from the couch for an hour and made them. I thought ice-cream cones had died for me when I received my celiac diagnosis. I never thought that I would be making my own ice-cream cones until I attended the gluten-free baking workshop in Erftstadt in October of 2013. One of the projects we did that day, were gluten-free ice-cream cones. It was my first ice-cream cone in a year and I ate it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. It was glorious! The other attendants of the workshop hadn’t eaten an ice-cream cone the same amount of time, or even longer. We swooned in unison.

I didn’t actually bake the ice-cream cones that day, but I watched eagerly. It is way easier than you might think, if you ensure to stick to a few rules:
1. Use very little batter to bake each waffle, about one tablespoon.
2. Press the waffle iron very firmly into itself for the first few seconds of the baking process.
3. Roll the waffle into an ice-cream cone immediately after opening the waffle iron.
4. Let the ice-cream cone rest on the cone which was delivered with your waffle iron. They may collapse if you don’t.
5. Allow your ice-cream cones to cool off entirely prior to filling them with ice-cream.

Sadly, I have no ice-cream at home and considering the state of my throat, it’s probably best this way. Since there is no rule against enjoying ice-cream cones plain, I ate two. They were fresh, very crunchy and full of buttery goodness! You can also make these in a vegan version.
Recipe (for 20 waffles)

70g butter (for a vegan version, use margarine)
140g powdered sugar
250ml milk (I used low-fat; for a vegan version I would use vanilla-flavoured soy-milk)
180g flour (I used Harina de Reposteria by AdPan)
1 package vanilla aroma (about 1 tsp; I would omit this for the vegan version)

Melt the butter in a pot. Take pot off the stove. Slowly stir in the powdered sugar. Add the milk, the vanilla aroma and then slowly add the gluten-free flour, whisking until the batter is lump-free.

Allow batter to rest for at least half an hour.

Grease your waffle iron and then turn it on. Place one tablespoon of batter on the lower pan of the waffle iron. Firmly press the waffle iron shut, holding it shut for a bit, and bake waffle until golden brown, about a minute to ninety seconds. Using the help of a silicone dough scraper, cover the cone which was delivered with your waffle iron in the freshly baked waffle. For best results, ensure that a bit of the waffle overlaps at the bottom of the cone, leaving no hole for potentially melted ice-cream to escape through later on. Let the plastic cone rest inside the waffle cone for another minute prior to removing in order to avoid your fresh ice cream cone to collapse. Repeat with the remainder of the batter until none is left.

I hear you can keep these in a sealed tupperware. As I have no own experience with this method, I cannot guarantee that your waffles won’t go soft and bland if you store them this way. Ice cream cones are huge – there was only space for six of them in my largest plastic container, so I may have to eat today’s batch up rather quickly. There’s worse!I hope you all have a great spring ahead of you!