Making "Never Enough Chocolate" Ice Cream Bowls: Part 1

Yesterday, we had planned to drive up to Long John Silvers for lunch (Go Fish!), but when we left for the gym in the morning, it was raining.  At the gym, the local station’s TV weather forecast called for rain all day.  So we decided to stay off the freeway.  We had found this Wilton “Ice Cream Bowl Pan” at Walmart, and at the time it looked like a fun and tasty project.  The pan then sat under our counter, alone, unloved, and forgotten, until yesterday, when my wife, anticipating a day spent inside, felt inspired to bake.  So she dug it out, read the directions, and decided to do something with it.

She has a favorite cookie recipe, one she calls Never Enough Chocolate cookies.  As the pan came with no recipes, she decided to adapt her own and make Never Enough Chocolate Ice Cream Bowls.  You’d never guess that she’s half-Swiss, would you?  (No, I’m not going to tell you which half).  To begin with, she got out a bar of dark chocolate, and chopped it as finely as she could.  Then she put the pieces into her blender and reduced them to a powdery consistency.  After that, she made up the rest of her batter, and put it in the fridge to chill.

After lunch, she took out the dough, and using a floured hand towel (Yes, she suggests that you start with a clean towel), she rolled out the dough until it was 1/8” thick.  Then she found an old plastic container that was 4 ½” in diameter, the size the instructions called for, and cut out large circles.  

She placed a circle of dough atop each bowl-form, and gently molded it onto its sculpted, wavy sides.  Then she put the pan in our oven, preheated to 375 degrees Fahrenheit, and waited patiently for the required 8 – 10 minutes (only switching on the light and peering inside the oven every minute or two to check on their progress).

When the timer dinged (or binged, or cha-chinged), she pulled out the pan, and let the bowl forms cool for 5 – 10 minutes before removing them.  The dough had risen, but it had also sunk down and spread past the little trench designed to catch any excess dough.  Still, they came off the pan fine, and not one of them broke.  She then repeated this process with another pan-full, so we ended up with a dozen cookie bowls.  

She pressed out the rest of the dough, and cut out some smaller circles, so we could have a small chocolate cookie for our afternoon snack.  Needless to say, the rest of the afternoon proved a torture, as we waited to fill them with ice cream that evening.  Tomorrow, I’ll tell you how they turned out, and give you the recipe.  (Yes, I really am that cruel).

Dragon Dave