Yay! An orange creamsicle with chocolate rice bits rose thingie!
Turns out that with the right tool (yay trowel), making icecream roses is really quite easy, and rather fun!
The trick is to start off with thin squarish pieces for the base, rotating the cone as you go along.
Then, towards the outer bit of the flowers, slowly start using thin rectangular pieces, rather than squarish ones, for the outer petals.
Also best done with icecream right out of the freezer - letting it melt just makes things messier and more squidgy.
Smooth icecreams are obviously the easiest to work with, but chunky icecreams work fine too, except for marshmallows. The darn things bounce all over the place and don't cut very well. And even if you manage to cut them, they try to fall off the petals...
Interestingly, these roses pack a LOT of icecream into a single cone. About 2 scoops worth, even if it doesn't look that way.
They also offer a nice way to mix flavours! So far I've just done the centre as one flavour, with outer petals as other flavours, but this is mostly because I only have one trowel...
21 cones later, it takes me about 2-3 minutes to make one rose. It's really very easy, once you get the basic concept down. Plus, as mentioned before, it gives the icecream a super 'fluffy' mouthfeel.
Now I'm wondering why this isn't more popular at icecream / gelato / frozen yoghurt shops.
If you want to try it out, but don't want to get a trowel...you can use a pie slicer, but their tapered heads are far from ideal. It's hard to get good leverage, and even harder to cut the icecream in thin slices. You'll end up with a different shape of petal, that can be quite tricky to maneuver. It's not unpossible (see previous post), but the trowel makes a HUGE difference, and isn't expensive.