Why we still bake our own waffle cones

Pre-made waffle cones are available from food service suppliers and they are not bad. They are consistent, they are cheap, and they save about 45 minutes of work every morning. Kaito bakes cones from scratch anyway, using a recipe he brought back from a stage in Bologna in 2015. The reason is partly flavour and partly texture, but mostly it is that a fresh cone behaves differently with gelato than a stored one does.

What changes when a cone is fresh ¶

A waffle cone baked that morning has a crispness that a stored cone does not. The difference is most noticeable in the last third of the cone, where the gelato has been sitting longest. A fresh cone stays crisp there; a stored cone tends to soften and become chewy. For a product that is already soft and melting, a chewy cone is a textural problem.

The flavour difference is subtler but real. Fresh cones have a toasted, slightly caramelised smell that fades within a few hours. By the time a pre-made cone reaches a shop, that smell is long gone.

The recipe and what it involves ¶

The Bologna recipe uses flour, egg, butter, sugar, and a small amount of vanilla. The batter is rested for 20 minutes before cooking. Each cone is cooked on a round iron for about 90 seconds, then rolled immediately while still hot and pliable. The rolling has to happen fast. Once the cone cools, it sets and cannot be shaped.

At Bright Moon Hub, Kaito bakes two batches of cones each morning: one at 10:00 and one at 10:40, before the shop opens at 11:00. Each batch makes about 18 cones. On busy weekend days, that is sometimes not enough and the shop switches to cups by mid-afternoon.

• Flour, egg, butter, sugar, vanilla. No additives
• Batter rested 20 minutes before cooking
• 90 seconds on the iron, rolled immediately while hot
• Two batches each morning, about 18 cones per batch

If you arrive on a Saturday afternoon and we are out of cones, that is why. The cup is a perfectly good alternative and the gelato is the same either way.