Ice cream isn’t the first thing I think of when Halloween treats are mentioned, but this year our weather seems to be warming up instead of cooling down, so this might just make it into Halloween preparations! They couldn’t be easier to make, and involve homemade chocolate chip cookies, ice cream, and black and orange candy sprinkles.

6 chocolate chip cookies
Mint chocolate chip and/or vanilla ice cream
Black and orange sprinkles, colored sugars or other Halloween cookie decorations
~ If cookies are homemade, make sure they’re completely cooled before preparing ice cream sandwiches.
~ Soften ice cream at room temperature about 10 minutes or …read more

This is a cause I can get behind: Andy Woodworth, a New Jersey librarian, is trying to rally support on Facebook for a new Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavor that he feels would be a big hit, especially because it’s main theme is libraries and reading!

Woodworth says “libraries are awesome” and “Ben & Jerry’s ice cream is tasty,” therefore “A library-themed Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream would be tasty awesome!” He’s come up with several suggestions for flavors:
~ Gooey Decimal System: dark fudge alphabet letters with caramel swirls in hazelnut ice cream
~ Rocky Read: vanilla with chocolate-covered nuts …read more

Just in time for summer, Klondike has announced that six of their stickless bar varieties will be getting a thicker chocolate shell.
To celebrate, they’re launching the “What Would You Do For A Klondike Bar NOW?” campaign with interactive online “Micro Bytes” to demonstrate just how far ice cream fans will be willing to go for the improved treats – or to just provide some entertainment during snack time!

The Khaki Pants Pete Online Video Game is modeled on the concept of 8-bit video games from the ’80s where characters face a series of “eyebrow-raising” challenges. Chapter 1 launched this past …read more

Norwegian ice creamery Henning Olsen has created a chocolaty, sweet version of a pop culture icon — the iPod — and given it the only logical name for it: the IcePod!

I couldn’t find any information on the treat in English, but from what I can tell it’s layers of ice cream and what looks like caramel that have a chocolate coating, and is of course shaped like the popular MP3 player.
The treats were released in Norway in March and there’s no word on what Apple thinks of this “homage!” Each box of ice cream also comes with a free MP3 …read more

One of the things that remind me of summer like nothing else is a cone of rocky road ice cream.

I had my first taste of it as a kid when my family went on a road trip to Indiana to visit relatives for the summer. It was the most amazing thing ever – chocolate ice cream, marshmallows, chunks of fudge, and nuts. From then on, whenever we had the opportunity to order our own flavor of ice cream, that was my first choice.
According to Wikipedia, the flavor was created in March 1929 in California by William Dreyer:
“…when he …read more

With the end of the year upon us it’s always fun to look back at the previous 12 months!
Here are the most popular posts from Chocolate Bytes for 2008. Did I include your favorite?

Make your own Oreos
Two-minute microwave fudge
Layered chocolate cheesecake bars
Chocolate cake in five minutes
How to check a label for expired candy
Grilled chocolate bananas
New chocolate biscuits baffle Brits
Lindt Excellence Chili Bar
Better Than WHAT Cake
Homemade Oreo ice cream
Flourless peanut butter chocolate chip cookies
Chocolate chip blondies

Don’t forget that tomorrow, Election Day, Ben & Jerry’s is offering a free scoop of ice cream at any of their participating Scoop Shops between 5 and 8 pm!
Find your nearest shop here, and you don’t even need a voting sticker now!
(Starbucks is also offering a free tall drip coffee for all customers, and Krispy Kreme will be giving away free star-shaped patriotic donuts if you bring your “I Voted” sticker!)
[image: flickr]

For voting, that is!
On November 4th, Ben & Jerry’s Scoop Shops around the U.S. will be giving away free scoops of ice cream. Just show them your “I Voted” sticker, a photo of you in front of your polling station, do the “I Voted dance” (ha!) or just tell them you voted.
There are 430 Scoop Shops in the U.S., and you can find one nearest to you here.
My favorite Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavors are Cookie Dough and New York Super Fudge Chunk. What are yours?
[image: flickr]

Sometimes you just need to go all out!
A homemade chocolate brownie topped with ice cream, sprinkles and chocolate syrup.
[image: flickr]

It’s National Soft Ice Cream Day, so I thought I’d share a new recipe. I don’t have any pictures of my usual ice cream process because the lid of my ice cream maker was overly-cuddled by one of the cats, who ended up knocking it to the floor where it didn’t survive.
So while I wait for the replacement lid to finally make its way out of New Jersey and to the desert southwest, I’ll leave you with the amusing picture above and a quick, no-maker-needed recipe for soft chocolate ice cream. This is by no means classy or elegant, …read more