Do you have a toddler or preschooler who absolutely loves ice-cream?
Every time we go out at the moment (it’s summer), our 4-year-old asks for ice-cream from the van or a shop. We don’t always say yes but when we do, it’s been £2.80+ a cone this year not including the Flake.
Shop-bought ice-creams with Flakes are around the £4 mark so £1 per ice-cream.
I recently shared this as a reel over on my Instagram page: do go and check it out here.
The Idea
I thought we’d give it a go making our own ice-creams to see whether, one, I could get away with giving my preschooler (and toddler though she won’t notice) less ice-cream than in the shop-bought ones and two, whether we could save money.
How Easy Were They To Make?
It was super simple to do this, and yes, you could just do this every time and you don’t need to save up plastic lids for that, but this way means that whenever our daughter has an ice-cream at home, there’s no prep as we’ve done it already and we can just take an ice-cream out of the freezer and it’s ready to serve.
This was a fun activity to do with my daughters. Both of them joined in (1 and 4-year-olds). They had a go at scooping ice-cream into cones. It was a little tricky and did need some support but not too much. Then, they both enjoyed adding the pre-chopped Flakes in and wrapping the whole lot in foil at the end.
Have you seen my other post about the benefits of sand play for toddlers? If not, please do check it out here.
How Did I Make The Transition To Less Ice-Cream Easier?
I found that including my daughters in the making of the ice-creams has also helped build enthusiasm for them, which has made the transition over from ready-made shop-bought ice-creams to ready-made DIY ice-creams even easier.
What Do You Need:
- Plastic lids off shop-bought Flake cones
- Long chocolate sticks to cut up (We used Flakes cut into thirds.)
- Flat-bottomed cones
- Their favourite ice-cream
- Tin foil
Instructions:
- Scoop a small quantity of ice-cream into a cone.
- Stick a chocolate stick in it.
- Pop a plastic lid on it.
- Wrap it all in tin foil.
- Place in the freezer ready for treat time.
The Price Difference
All prices are for summer 2023.
Ice-Cream Van Prices : £2.80 for a 99′
Shop Prices for a single cone: £2.80 plus 50p Flake = £3.20
Supermarket Multi-Pack of 4 Flake Ice-Creams = £4 so £1 per ice-cream
My prices:
Cones: 21 pack of which I used 7: £1.70 so 57p
Carte D’Or vanilla ice-cream: £3.75 of which I used less than a quarter so approx. 94p
4 pack of long Flakes: £1.65 of which I used 2 so 83p
Foil: 99p of which I used about 10p’s worth or less
Total Spend: £8.09 of which I used about £2.44 worth of product as I still have loads left over.
This equates to 35p per ice-cream as I made 7 ice-creams (as that was how many plastic lids I’d managed to save.)
This is a great saving.
My conclusion:
Yes, these ice-creams are smaller so the price should be less but they have also helped make it easier for us to feed our daughter less ice-cream. There is only so much sharing of ice-cream with her little sister that she’s willing to do so each having their own ice-creams has helped avoid any arguments too.
Will you be giving this a go this summer?
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