The products we used:
What do we want? Ice cream! When do we want it? Now!
If you have children or were ever a child, you’ll know how impatient children can be, especially when they are hungry for a treat. And almost as soon as they get the treat, they devour it.
Ice cream is one of those treats that resists being devoured immediately. “Slow down,” says Vanilla, “you and I need to get comfortable and really take in this moment together.”
Your beautiful child ignores Vanilla and continues to stab fruitlessly at Vanilla’s top layer, nibbling off flakes of ice cream here and there.
Shortcut to Brain-freeze
There are ice cream scoops that help you get the ice cream out of the tub faster. They’re perfect for preventing kitchen skirmishes during the high-tension summer months.
But what if you have an individual cup of ice cream that’s hard as a diamond and just as alluring? You’ve successfully prevented an inter-generational diary dessert crisis, but now your hot-blooded children have a new foe to slay: the cold, unfeeling laws of thermodynamics.
What you need is a spoon that can channel your little ones’ passion for cookies & cream, taking the flames in the palms of their sweaty child hands and turning their spoons into a glowing sword fit for King Arthur or Link from The Legend of Zelda.
Well, my friends, Globalkitchen Japan has just such a spoon provided by our friends at Todai and Asahi’s and Asahi.
The Power of Almighty Aluminum and Copper
How do Todai and Asahi’s ice cream spoon give your children the terrible power to shovel ice cream at light-speed into their noses, cheeks, chins, and eventually their mouths? The secret is highly thermo-conductive metal. Todai’s spoon is made of aluminum, and Asahi’s spoon is made of copper. Both are good conductors of heat–copper especially. When your little balls of fire and lightning come inside to escape the skin-crackling heat of the summer Sun and take and ice cream spoon from Todai or Asahi in their hands, the heat from their hands will quickly spread straight to the scooping end of the spoon. Even the high-fat “good stuff” won’t stand a chance. The ice cream will yield. The children will consume. Brain-freeze will come.
Of course, while the kids scream in a violent mixture of agony and ecstasy in the next room, you can take your ice cream into the study and meditate on the meaning of mint chocolate chip. However, children have a naturally higher internal body temperature, making these spoons especially powerful in their hands. While you hold your spoon delicately in your fingertips, they’ll grasp their spoons in their fists, boosting the effectiveness of the spoon even more.
Adding Color to the Occasion
Besides the ability to cut into Siberian permafrost, the Todai spoons have another quality that your little ones will enjoy: the pretty colors. In addition to the typical silver and gold colors you expect from spoons, Todai also provides blue, red, black, and pink spoons. Strawberry cheesecake tastes even better when eaten with a bright, red spoon of UNLIMITED POWER.
Of course, you and the grandparents can enjoy the fine glow of the copper Asahi spoons, too.
But does it really work?
I’m a natural-born skeptic. I try to stay open to the possibilities, but life experience has taught me that most promises made by industry are broken. So when they tell me that a spoon made of copper will increase the speed at which I can eat ice cream, my primordial, reptilian brain wants immediately to test that assertion. Even if has an effect, can it really be that significant? And what are the unexpected consequences of being able to eat ice cream a couple minutes faster?
So here’s what I did: I grabbed a spoon out of my kitchen drawer, the Todai, and the Asahi spoons, and a small cup of ice cream out of the freezer. Chocolate cookie. Nice.
As soon as I took it out, I opened it up, set it on the table, and gave it a good stab with my regular spoon. Yep, the ice cream was hard. I estimate I’d need to wait a minute or two to be able to eat it.
Then I took the Todai in my hand and held it like a poor British boy from a 1930s Christmas movie eating soup in an orphanage. I wanted to heat that spoon up fast. Then I gave the ice cream a stab. The initial entry was a bit deeper, but more importantly, the spoon continued to slide deeper as I held it down. The effect was subtle–it didn’t cut through the ice cream like a hot knife through butter–but noticeable. I scooped some ice cream into my mouth and yep, it was cold. My old man teeth hurt a little when I bit into it.
Next was the Asahi. The Asahi is quite a bit smaller. It felt unnatural to hold it in a fist. The handle has a wide point at the end where it seems designed to be held between the thumb and pointer-finger. I took it in my hand, gave a couple of seconds for it to warm up, and then commenced the stab-test. Same as with the Todai, the effect was subtle but noticeable. The main difference between the Todai and the Asahi was that the Asahi transferred the cold of the ice cream back into my fingers. The Todai got cold, but perhaps it stayed warmer because I could easily hold it using my whole hand?
In any case, the spoons both did what they say they’ll do: Get ice cream into mouth faster.
A Strange Side-Effect
I experienced a strange side-effect from using the spoons, however: I wanted to slow down. Yes, the first bites can quickly, but when the cold of the ice cream sunk into my fingertips, I thought “I’ll just hold it and warm it up a bit.” After giving a little time for it to warm up, I took another bite. This time, I thought, “If I hold it in my mouth for a short time, it’ll warm up more quickly. Then I can scoop even more quickly!”
In order to scoop the ice cream more easily, I began to eat the ice cream more slowly. That was not something I predicted to happen.
The spoons encouraged me to slow down and enjoy the ice cream, rather than to greedily shovel it into my mouth.
A Noble Spoon for More Civilized Ice Cream Enjoyment
So for kids, the spoons are good because they really do help get that first bite in faster. The design of the Todai in particular is interesting and makes eating the ice cream more enjoyable for the little ones. While adults might experience tooth pain with the first bite, but kids crunch down on plain ice, so they will be perfectly happy with extra-cold ice cream.
Kids might not find the Asahi especially interesting, but adults looking to slow down and enjoy a high-quality cup of ice cream will appreciate both its size and thermo-conductive qualities.
Take in the Cold
If you’re looking for more ways to slow down and enjoy the cold this summer, you could try preparing, freezing, and then eating some fruit with the Fruit Plant. And if you are a true connoisseur of the cold, then it might be time to consider what life could be like with a shaved ice machine.
