Take every good thing you can imagine. Rich creamy chocolate, candied pecans, colored sprinkles, fruit, what have you. Now put it all on, in, and around your favorite ice-cream. That’s a sundae, and it’s heaven.

Anonymous

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves. There’s a delightful marriage that happens when you put together a sundae, a blending of all your favorite things in one place, where they might make the transit from bowl to mouth in a single well-laden scoop. Sundae Day celebrates this incredible treat, and it’s uncertain and contested past.

History of Sundae Day

Sundae Day was established to celebrate this delicious treat, and there’s no question of its origins. However the same can not be said of the sundae itself, a treat that multiple places claim to have created, and no one place has been able to truly prove its claim to. The first claim seems to come from Two Rivers, Wisconsin, a beautiful city on the Lake Michigan shore, 40 miles SE of Green Bay. Here a certain Ed Berners, having been asked to do so by a customer on vacation, added chocolate syrup to a simple vanilla ice cream bowl. While Berners questioned how good it would be, given that soda was far more common a topper for ice cream at the time, the results were nothing less than game-changing. It took no time at all for him to add it to the menu and mix in all sorts of ingredients.

Of course, that’s just one of them, Ithaca, New York would put forth that on a certain Sunday in April of 1892, a certain Reverend John Scott visited Chester Platt at his establishment, Platt & Colt Pharmacy. In a moment of creativity, Mr. Platt decided he would create the “Cherry Sunday”, adorning simple vanilla ice cream with cherry syrup and a single candied cherry. Who’s right? Well, the paper trail supports Ithaca, but that doesn’t stop Two Rivers from standing by its claim.

NATIONAL SUNDAE DAY ACTIVITIES

1. Host your own sundae bar

   Sundaes are a dessert party in a bowl, so what better way to celebrate this sweet holiday than to host your own sundae bar with some friends? Time for an ice cream social hour.

2. Make your own hot fudge sauce

   Making homemade hot fudge sauce is so simple, so good, and so chocolatey that you will never want to go back to the store-bought squirt-out-of-the-bottle kind again. Search online for a recipe — most use fairly simple ingredients like heavy cream, cocoa powder, vanilla, chocolate, brown sugar, and corn syrup. Store it in your fridge and you can drizzle this chocolate concoction for months on end.

3. Make it boozy

   Time to make an adult version of this childhood favorite. For a simple but very grown-up dessert, pour a tablespoon of coffee-flavored liqueur over a coffee ice cream sundae, or some crème de menthe over a mint chocolate chip sundae. You’ll be drunk in love with sundaes all over again.

    

NATIONAL SUNDAE DAY DATES