Saturday, February 5 is National Ice Cream for Breakfast Day (I know, right, who comes up with these?! Keep reading.)
Regardless of how days of national recognition are selected, I’m all on board with this one!
So Who Started Ice Cream for Breakfast Day?
Actually, I researched it and found that National Ice Cream for Breakfast Day was started in Rochester, New York in the 1960s during the dead of winter. A housewife and mother of six young children, Florence Rappaport was faced with finding ways to creatively entertain them during a major blizzard in 1966.
According to her children, Mrs. Rappaport loved ice cream, although sweets were not regularly served in their home, and she decided that ice cream for breakfast during the snowed-in days would be a fun – and unexpected – treat for the children!
It caught on by word of mouth over the years and surprised even the Rappaport family by how far and wide it spread. It’s been celebrated in Mexico, China, Israel, New Zealand, Egypt, and Germany to name a few, and Rochester takes special pride as its birthplace.
Ice cream shops often hold charity-supporting events to commemorate National Ice Cream for Breakfast Day on the first Saturday in February. I hadn’t heard of it until recently, but it sounds like a great idea to me!
Photo Shoot of … Ice Cream!
In honor of National Ice Cream for Breakfast Day – which I hope each of you will observe on Saturday morning – I thought it would be fun to do a photo shoot of ice cream. My favorite flavor is peach ice cream, but strawberry is a close second, and I bought strawberry to do the photographs.
Photographing ice cream is fun, sticky, and challenging! I decided to style two very different scenes for the photographs, with one having a black/grey backdrop and more moody feeling, and the other having a white/pink backdrop and lighter feeling. They both were fun to do!
My food props of fresh strawberries and pink carnations were used for both scenes, while some other items vary. But the main constant in both scenes is the strawberry ice cream!
Hands-Down Best Strawberry Ice Cream. Ever.
The absolutely best-ever strawberry ice cream is made by Tillamook County Creamery Association, a farmer-owned co-op of 80 farming families in Tillamook County, Oregon. It was started in 1909, and in addition to amazing ice cream, they produce cheese, butter, sour cream, and yogurt.
You can buy Tillamook ice cream at Publix, as well as other stores that sell groceries. It’s so delicious it would be worth a drive to Oregon to get it, but fortunately, we can buy it locally here in Florida!
When you’re photographing ice cream, you can choose a firm, icy-looking product that holds its shape pretty well when you’re working with it – or you can select an extra-creamy product like Tillamook that will give you those luscious, sloooow drips down the sides of what’s holding the ice cream.
Guess you can tell my preference (and only partly because it’s still in your house after you finish photographing it, so why not choose the one you like best)!
Celebrate with Ice Cream. For Breakfast. On Saturday.
Without further ado …
First, let me encourage everybody to eat ice cream for breakfast on Saturday morning – hey, it’s only one day out of the year, and if you don’t see this blog post in time, celebrate it for Sunday’s breakfast!
Second, I hope you’ll enjoy seeing the ice cream photographs as much as I enjoyed taking them today.
And bring over a spoon if you want to join me for breakfast on Saturday!
What’s your favorite ice cream? Do you celebrate (or know about) National Ice Cream for Breakfast Day? Be sure to comment below!
