Bowl. Cone is too much hassle and a bunch of extra sugar without proportional eating pleasure.
bowl > wafer cone > waffle cone > sugar cone > my bare cupped hand
Least to most messy; duh.
The best ice cream is the ice cream in my hot fudge sundae. No whipped cream, no cherry, no crushed nuts. Just ice cream and fudge. Mmmmmmm.
ETA: There is almost never a a time when “no thank you, I’m good” is an appropriate response to free ice cream; it risks offending the Universe. 
I usually prefer a bowl of ice cream.
I do enjoy a chocolate dipped cone at Diary Queen. That’s a rare treat.
A simple sugar cone, with a double dip of either Black Raspberry or Maple Walnut ice cream.
In Maine. For some reason NYC does not offer these two flavors, so you have to go north at least as far as Massachusetts to get them.
If you have trouble consuming an ice cream cone without having it melt all over your fingers or fall into your lap, I recommend the classic 1968 New Yorker essay by L. Rust Hills, “How To Eat an Ice Cream Cone.”
Whenever I think of the “cake” cones (I’d call them wafer cones, too), I think of the ice cream cones you’d get at Thrifty Drug Stores. Used to be a nickel for a single scoop way into at least the 80s. Such a bargain. And good ice cream, too. But that’s mostly a nostalgia thing. I prefer a bowl. And I’m not a big fan of a lot of toppings.
Soft chocolate in the classic cone.
All other forms in a bowl.
Really? Holy crap. That still only like fifteen cents a scoop in today’s money. Never heard of this Thrifty Drug Store, but they definitely lived up to their name.
I will never eat ice cream with a cake cone/plain cone. I remember being so disappointed in that flavorless spongy crap when I was a kid. And then when you got to that bottom there was that rock-hard grid trapping the last bits of delicious ice cream.
I like both cake and sugar cones equally. Waffle cones are good but way too big.
I hate when they pile vast quantities of ice cream in a cone. 1 large or 2 small scoops are just right in a cone.
I love DQ’s chocolate soft serve dipped in chocolate. But of the 3 area DQ’s, only one of them has the chocolate soft serve.
If I have a bowl of ice cream I’m going to want just a couple of toppings; just hot fudge or hot fudge and either raspberries or bananas. NO whipped cream, NO nuts, NO cherries, NO sprinkles. The best part of a hot fudge sundae is when you get to the end and there’s still some globs of hot fudge with the melted ice cream. MMM MMM MMM!
I will not turn down ice cream in any format, but given the choice, i want a cake cone.
Me too. And they had those cyclindrical scoopers so you if you had two scoops one would fit perfectly on top of the other.
Anyway, I’ve always preferred those, though I don’t have occasion to eat ice cream away from home much anymore and at home I just use a coffee mug.
For my entire life, I’ve been incapable of eating an ice cream cone by licking it. I honestly don’t know how people do it. I remember being given a chocolate ice cream cone when I was about 5 years old, and ended up with most of the ice cream melting and running down my arm to my elbow and then dripping all over my clothes and shoes. I’m pretty sure that was the last ice cream cone I was ever given as a child.
So to this day, I order ice cream in a cup. Very occasionally, I’ll be handed a cone anyway, so I have to then ask for a cup. (At which point I put the entire ice cream cone upside down in the cup, and still eat it with a spoon.)
In a pinch, a large waffle cone is acceptable, because it basically acts like a cup. I still eat the eat cream with a spoon, though.
In the handy single serve quart size…
This.
As someone with a big bushy beard and mustache, an ice cream cone is a disaster waiting to happen. Bowl all the way.
Honestly, I’d rather have a shake.
Usually a bowl - less messy and holds more. But I wouldn’t object to a free sugar cone if it were that or nothing.
When I was a little kid, we were pretty poor, and my Dad worked in a big zoo, which had a bunch of food kiosks, most of which only opened in summer- they’d have a clear out at the end of season, and chuck out anything that wasn’t going to last 'til next year. Dad would often bring back some of the short-dated but still OK food for us kids.
One day he brought back a case or two of waffle cones. I think there would have been about 200 cones in a case. Now my parents were nothing if not thrifty (at least back then), and I think Mum decided that they were basically cookies, right? So they were dessert, until we’d eaten them up. No ice cream, just the cones. Increasingly soft, bendy cones as the months wore on.
I don’t think I’ve voluntarily eaten one of the horrid things since.
So I’ll just have a wafer cone please; I’d go for a bowl, but I always seem to wind up stuck carrying them for an unreasonable length of time before finding an appropriate place to dispose of 'em, and they’re too sticky to squish up and put in my pocket.
-double post- I blame the waffle cone trauma
When I was about 7 or 8 years old, I was aware of only the sugar cone. To me, an ice cream cone was a sugar cone. I remember the first time I was asked by a Baskin-Robbins server whether I wanted a plain cone or a sugar cone, I was confused. I wasn’t used to the idea that there was a choice. I didn’t know what was what, but I guessed that the cone that I was used to as being the standard cone must be the “plain” cone. Boy, was I disappointed when I received a plain/cake/wafer cone. I still haven’t gotten over that disappointment and I have resented the existence of plain/cake/wafer cones ever since.
If I’m outside on a hot day, the way God intended ice cream to be eaten, I prefer a cone. That way I can eat the whole thing and have no garbage left over. I hate walking around with trash.
If I’m sitting down and eating, I might as well use the bowl.