Behold, the edible coffee cup:
The baked cup is lined with a special icing sugar that makes the cup waterproof (for enough time to drink the espresso anyways) and sweetens the coffee at the same time.
Michael Coren examines other types of edible packaging:
Containers to chow down on are becoming a bit of a trend. French design company Miit came up with a recipe for a digestible version of a chocolate fondue pot, while a Harvard professor has developed biodegradable plastic membranes that taste like their contents and may be eaten along with them. Bon appetit.
Update from a reader:
Not a new idea. You no doubt know the source of the term/disease "trench mouth":
A trencher (from Old French tranchier; "to cut") is a type of tableware, commonly used in medieval cuisine. A trencher was originally a piece of stale bread, cut into a square shape by a carver, and used as a plate, upon which the food could be placed before being eaten. At the end of the meal, the trencher could be eaten with sauce, but was more frequently given as alms to the poor.
The poor used the trencher over and over, sometimes a bit too long…
Another:
Edible packaging to me isn’t new – when I was growing up back in the innocent 1950s, there was a food truck that used to come around our Brooklyn neighborhood called Chow Chow Cup. Looked similar to the Mister Softee trucks. The truck would serve up "Chinese food" (basically chow mein) in an edible bowl made from molded fried noodles – similar to an egg roll but opened flat with a depressed bowl in the center. I think the motto on the side of the truck was "A Tasty Treat In The Cup You Can Eat".
Another:
I remember something like this from my childhood, too. We called them "ice cream cones."
(Photo by designer Enrique Luis Sardi of Sardi Innovation)
The Dish 