How Does Dairy Queen's Dipped Cone Work?

Dairy Queen's dipped cone is just as, if not more iconic than the chain's many varieties of Blizzards. According to Allrecipes, the chain has been selling the treats since the 1950s. Advertisements called it the "cone with the curl on top," and the original price was only five cents per cone. While the price has risen quite a bit since then, the treat is still affordable and iconic to Dairy Queen's brand. Many customers have wondered, however, exactly how it is made.

Dairy Queen creates the dipped cone just like a regular cone at first, placing the soft serve on the cone carefully to create the iconic swirl at the top. It is then dipped into flavored coating that is made to harden as soon as it makes contact with the ice cream, coating it in a solid shell of chocolate, cherry, or Crunchin' Cookie flavor (the latter of which is available for a limited time as of this writing). You can also choose to add sprinkles for a small extra charge.

You may wonder how Dairy Queen's ice cream doesn't fall off the cone when dipped into the chocolate and cherry coating. The answer lies in the composition of the soft-serve, and is the same reason Dairy Queen employees can flip the Blizzards.

Dairy Queen's soft serve has only about 5% butterfat, making it lighter than real ice cream. It also incorporates air, making it even more light and less likely to fall when flipped upside down and dipped into the coating. Even the temperature plays a role: Dairy Queen's soft serve comes out at about 25 degrees Fahrenheit, a much higher temperature than other ice cream, usually kept in a freezer that's about 0 degrees Fahrenheit. This makes it more pliable and less likely to fall when flipped.

Still, accidents do happen. On a Reddit thread where a user asked how Dairy Queen cones don't fall when dipped, user u/svyrv said, "I worked there when I was a teenager and we had a certain weight amount that went on each size. We would fill the inside of the cone as well. There was a lot of time during rush time that it would fall off in the dip and we would have to fish it out before the ice cream melted in there lol." Even with Dairy Queen's regulations and the carefully crafted soft-serve composition, human error will always lead to a few ruined cones.