Call them dipped cones, chocolate cones, whatever. One of the best ice cream treats is a vanilla cone of soft serve, covered in a chocolate hard shell topping. Akin to an Eskimo Pie, the hard shell topping gives a plain vanilla cone a little crunch, a little chocolate flavor that is delightful.

So we see the person at the dairy dip cover that cone in the liquid hard shell topping, without ever losing the ice cream. It may be slightly warm and still pliable, even, as she hands it out the window to the eager consumer. A few chocolate drips might even ooze from the cone's edge. The question then, is how does that hard shell topping go from what looks like chocolate syrup to, well, a hard shell topping? In a word? Paraffin.

Edible, food-grade paraffin wax is mixed with the chocolate mixture, along with a little soybean oil. Together, these ingredients form the hard shell topping beloved by children of all ages.

It's not known exactly when the hard shell topping became popular, but certainly, the widespread advent of soft-serve ice cream and the popularity of the Eskimo Pie frozen treat helped it along. Dad could eat it while driving as the family takes the Great American Road Trip. My dad loved them and knew the location of every drive-up dairy dip in a 10-county area. He also took us to most of them.

The Hershey Corporation makes a Magic Shell® topping that incorporates the hard shell topping mixture into a squeeze bottle so people everywhere can get that dairy dip feeling in their own homes. In a restaurant however, the hard shell topping mixture is kept in a warmer so it will remain in a liquid state. When wax cools, it hardens, so when the hard shell topping dip hits the cold ice cream, the hardening is almost immediate.

Edible paraffin passes through the body without being absorbed. It is found in many candies, chocolates and even in those wax bottles of strangely flavored syrups I remember from my childhood.

While I may sometimes buy a bottle of Magic Shell® for my home, nothing is better than going to the Dari Delite or Dairy Queen on a hot day and ordering a vanilla dipped cone. The chocolate hard shell topping makes the ice cream into a lovely sculpture, and I always revisit a little of my childhood when I eat it.