Stop waiting for hard ice cream and butter with heat-conducting spoons and knives

If you are working from home, you may be thinking, "I'm here in the same spot every day and I need a change of scenery!" With summer just around the corner, a cold treat is just what you need!

You can go to the nearest supermarket or convenience store, buy the ice cream you want, and eat it while you work to feel refreshed.

Mini ice cream cups are a wonderful treat and they make for a great break when you're at work.

The only problem is when you take it out of the freezer and want to dig in, only to find that it's so hard you can't even stick your spoon into it. The waiting is so frustrating, especially when your time is limited.

You could put your spoon under hot water, or even take the cup and dip it into a bowl of hot water for a few seconds to see if that helps, but who wants to go through all that trouble?

"If I was in such a hurry, I shouldn't have eaten ice cream in the first place," you may end up thinking.

But there's a better way. You can eat your ice cream hassle-free and not by heating it up directly, but by using a tool.

This high-quality ice cream spoon is made in Tsubame City, Niigata Prefecture, renowned for its metal-processing industry.

The surface coating is gold and silver plating but as the name COPPER suggests (it sounds more fashionable to Japanese consumers when it's written in English), they're made from pure copper, which has nearly five times the thermal conductivity of iron, so the temperature of your hand can travel through the spoon and reach the ice cream directly.

Mini ice cream cup

Two writers at our sister site Grape did an experiment with a mini ice cream cup, one using a plastic spoon, and the other using the COPPER ice cream spoon.

The writer expected that she'd have to hold the spoon firmly in her hand for a while before it would heat up, but surprisingly, she was able to scoop ice cream right away.

It is tastiest when it's just melting a little bit like this...

Her colleague wasn't so fortunate. She was clearly struggling with her ice cream and her plastic spoon was about to break.

Her colleague tried different flavors of ice cream, but that didn't seem to be the reason.

She felt a bit bad for her colleague who was still trying to scrape ice cream from the surface, but she went ahead and began enjoying her tasty cold treat.

The COPPER ice cream spoon isn't just something you'll want to keep in your cutlery drawer at home, either. You may have good reasons to put it in your bag and take it along with you.

Case in point: Traveling by shinkansen on your next trip to Japan.

The ice cream sold on board the Tokaido and Sanyo Shinkansen, Tohoku Shinkansen, and Hokuriku Shinkansen is too hard to be eaten immediately after purchase.

The spoon you get when you buy a mini ice cream cup is made of plastic.

The train company probably keeps it so cold out of consideration for the long trips people make in bullet trains, but it can be really frustrating when you're completely exhausted from walking around and sightseeing, you rushed to the station to make it on time to board the train and now you're starving, hot and want to eat that ice cream.

But if you have your trusty COPPER ice cream spoon with you, there's nothing to worry about.

It's obvious who the winner will be in this bout. Bullet train ice cream never had a chance. And the ultimate winner is the happy passenger who gets to enjoy their ice cream hassle-free.

In fact, these spoons are so effective you can even cut an ice cube with it.

Hard butter? No problem

A writer from our sister site Grape took the COPPER butter knife home and tried it the following morning at breakfast time with a block of butter fresh from her refrigerator.

It was like dipping a spoon into a pudding. No resistance at all.

If you enjoy real butter, you probably know the drill. You set it out on the table first so that it has time to soften a bit, then set the rest of the dishes and cutlery, bring out the food, etc.

But we don't always plan so carefully. Imagine waking up sleepy-eyed and sitting down to breakfast. You decide you want butter on your toast but it wasn't on the table. Now if you bring it out, you have to wait. Meanwhile, your coffee is getting cold and you're wasting time... Not an ideal situation.

With the COPPER butter knife, you can dig into that butter without a second thought.

The wonderful thing about "COPPER" is not only its ease of use.

It is made in Tsubame City, Niigata Prefecture, a city famous for its metal craftsmanship. The mirror finish gives it a beautiful appearance that makes you want to admire it.

Both the silver and gold spoons come in their own packaging and make great gifts.

Check out the COPPER ice cream spoon and butter knife series at grape SHOP.

(We use WorldShopping Global. The grape SHOP page is in Japanese, but if you see the WorldShopping widget appear at the bottom of the page, that product can be shipped overseas).

Read more stories from grape Japan.

-- The ‘Espresso Shake’ is back for good with a permanent position on the Tully’s menu

-- Studio Ghibli apparel brand GBL debuts first accessory lineup featuring Nausicaa and Ohmu

-- Japanese cat owner’s handmade corn swaddling is adorable and impressively realistic

© grape Japan