Everyone loves to see the ice cream truck coming down the street! And in their heyday they were designed to be pleasant -even if they are only pleasant memories. Dark Roasted Blend has a collection of spiffy ice cream trucks (and ice cream bicycles) for your perusal. Link

(Image credit: Mr. Whippy)

The folks at One Million Moms, which is affiliated with the right-wing Christian group American Family Association, have decided they’re not going to stand for double entendre-laced desserts. “The vulgar new flavor has turned something as innocent as ice cream into something repulsive.”

In the past, Ben & Jerry’s has released controversial ice creams, like a special edition of Chubby Hubby called Hubby Hubby last year which celebrated gay marriage. It seems that offending customers has become an annual tradition for Ben & Jerry’s.

Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like no one told One Million Moms that Ben & Jerry’s knows people offended by gay marriage and testicle jokes aren’t their target customer base in the first place.

Link Via Flavorwire

Last year I shared some of the weirdest ice cream flavors in the world with you guys, but Food & Wine has a great collection of other strange ice cream treats ranging from this ice cream molded like sushi to cicada ice cream to ice cream pizza. While some of them look delicious, but the great majority are just plain weird.

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If you’re looking for a fun way to cool down while letting yourself feel like a kid again, these Lucky Charms ice cream sandwiches look delicious, even if they are a bit of a sugar-overload.

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Breakfast Safari created this delightful fake Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavor and man, do I wish it was real. They already have ice cube trays featuring Han, all you’d have to do would be use them to mass produce the chocolate candies.

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Nothing like a cold blueberry Darth Vader pop or a strawberries and cream Marilyn Monroe-sicle to quench your thirst on a hot summer day, is there? Created by a Russian company called Stoyn, these treats also come in Mario (tequila sunrise), a graffiti can (bubble gum), Donald Duck (banana chocolate), Mickey Mouse (mango) and poet Vladimir Mayakovsky (cranberry vodka).

Link via Laughing Squid

The art collective Stoyn made molded ice cream treats of pop culture figures, including Marilyn Monroe and Donald Duck. It’s unclear whether Mario, who is available in tequila sunrise flavor, is actually alcoholic. Link (Google Translate) -via Fubiz (Google Translate)

Ice Cream Cone Fan – $7.95

Are you looking for a fun way to beat the summer heat? You need the Ice Cream Cone Fan from the NeatoShop.  With this little fan you will finally get to claim the title of Coolest Person in the Neighborhood!

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more fabulous Personal Care items!

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This made me giggle. Video comedian Alki Stevens is trying to make cone-ing the hot (cool?) new trend for the summer. Here’s what you do: go to a fast-food drive-through. Order a cone. When you drive up to the window to receive your tasty treat, grab it by the ice cream, not the cone. I just love the expressions of the bewildered fast food workers and love imagining them turning around and saying, “You would not believe what this guy just did…”

Link via Eater

Employees collected the cicadas in their backyards and removed most of the dead bugs’ wings. They then boiled the bountiful bugs and covered them in brown sugar and milk chocolate. The base ice cream is brown sugar and butter flavour.

Does this sound like a tasty treat to you?

Link - Via CBC

Colin Bleasdale, an ice cream maker in Lancashire, UK, hopes to be entered in the Guinness Book of World Records for an ice cream concoction that he is making for the upcoming British royal wedding:

Mr Bleasdale, who teaches art at Larches House in Preston, said: “The ice cream will resemble a wedding posy that will be covered in fake jewels made from jelly or melted toffee.

“Fifteen cones will be used to create the bouquet and each one will be covered with real gold leaves. I may also include a champagne sorbet and black truffles.”

Mr. Bleasdale hopes to top his creation with a large sapphire. Question: if one wanted to make the world’s most expensive ice cream, couldn’t one just get a generic brand then charge a really high price for it? Anyway, I post this story with some hesitation, keeping in mind Tamara Keel’s admonition about Americans and royalty:

If George Washington knew you were Tweeting about the British royal wedding, he’d snatch the iPhone from your hand and kick your ass.

Link via Born Rich | Image: Born Rich

Imagine an ice cream truck rolling into your neighborhood playing that tune -wouldn’t you run to it as fast as you can? Admiral Snackbar, indeed! This is an advertisement for Star Wars Popsicles, one of many April Fool’s Day items from Think Geek. Link

The dessert, called Baby Gaga, is churned with donations from 15 women who responded to an advertisement on an online mothers’ forum.

One of the women, Victoria Hiley, 35, said if adults realised how tasty breast milk was more new mothers would be encouraged to breastfeed.

Each serving of Baby Gaga at Icecreamists costs £14.

Mrs Hiley’s donation was expressed on site and pasteurised before being churned with Madagascan vanilla pods and lemon zest.

Icecreamists founder Matt O’Connor placed an advert appealing for breast milk donations and believes his new recipe will be a success.[...]

“If it’s good enough for our children, it’s good enough for the rest of us,” he said.

Video at the link.

Link via Stuff | Image: BBC

Here’s something your friends will all remember -propping their tired feet up on an ice cream cookie at your home! This ottoman made of wood, canvas, velvet, and foam is available now from Jellio. Link

Make a cone out of a piece of bread, line it with peanut butter, and top with a scoop of your favorite homemade jelly-flavored ice cream! Grathio Labs has the complete instructions. Once you get the cone made, the rest is simple. Link -via Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories

Head chef behind the K99′s recipes Ceric Nale said: ‘When it came to designing the recipes for the K99s, we wanted to make sure we had the most exciting flavour and texture combinations.

‘After a lot of research, a gammon and chicken ice cream and a mixed dog biscuit ice cream were the clear winners, and we hope they’ll be flavours dogs simply can’t refuse.’

Link via Geekosystem | Photo (unrelated) via Flickr user Roadsidepictures used under Creative Commons license

You’ll notice some of the flavors seen on other lists, like lychee, red bean and sesame, are not included here, as they are everyday dessert flavors in their country, and therefore, not all that strange as an ice cream flavoring. Instead, this article focuses on those flavors that make even the most native-son of a given region ask “what the heck were you thinking?”

Something’s Fishy

Agutuk

It could be debated whether or not this North American frozen treat is technically an ice cream, being as how it’s made without any cream or even vegan-friendly cream substitutes, but its nickname, “Eskimo Ice Cream” and its shocking ingredients certainly qualify it to be on this list. So what’s in agutuk? Snow, berries, seal oil and reindeer fat. If cute animals make delicious food, then this has got to be the best ice cream around.

Image via Andrea Pokrzywinski [Flickr]

Crab

As for more traditional ice creams with non-traditional flavors, this savory crab ice cream is described as more of a frozen crab bisque than what you would normally think of as ice cream.

Lobster

The lobster ice cream seems a lot more along the lines of a traditional American dessert product, as it has a sugary butter base with chunks of sweet lobster blended in. A Massachusetts dessert parlor started making the treat just to prove that they actually do concoct their own flavors. Surprisingly, the flavor took off and is now one of the most popular items served.

Caviar

For an equally luxurious treat, consider the caviar ice cream by Philippe Faur. If that’s not your style, he also makes mustard, Roquefort, black truffles, pepper and foie gras flavor as well. Unlike the lobster ice creams, these aren’t meant for dessert though, they are actually intended as a side dish or appetizer to tantalize the senses and prepare you for accompanying flavors to come.

Oyster

Apparently luxurious savory ice creams aren’t actually a modern trend, but an old time classic that has been long forgotten about. Lorraine Eaton discovered and posted a recipe for oyster ice cream that dates back to 1824 and was supposedly a popular treat amongst the upper classes in the time of the Revolutionary War. The dish itself is essentially just an oyster stew with the oysters strained out. Reviews from Eaton’s recreation of the dish seem fairly mixed and one tester nearly vomited after tasting it, but it would certainly be a brave appetizer for those who want to feel a gourmet connection with the founding fathers.

Shrimp

If you’re looking for a customizable fish-based ice cream, better head to Cold Stone Creamery in Florida’s Fernandina Beach during the local shrimp fest to try their shrimp ice cream with your choice of mix-ins. Apparently, the light flavor of shrimp makes this base a perfect compliment to tropical fruits like pineapple and coconut.

Octopus, Squid Ink and Eel

The Japanese are known for being very open to new flavors. In fact, ice cream itself is even a fairly recent addition to the national palate, which is why they are so open to experimenting with flavor combinations most Americans could never even imagine. Some fun flavors you might be afraid to try include octopus, squid ink and eel. Supposedly the octopus flavor isn’t too bad and it doesn’t have any chunks in it unless you buy it garnished with tentacles. Squid ink has a rather mild flavor, so the pitch black sweet also gets fairly high ratings, even from non-natives.

On the other hand, eel seems to be limited to those with more “acquired tastes” for the fish and is said to taste incredibly fishy, or as one reviewer put it, “imagine a section of the ocean where about eight thousand very large sea creatures have died and started to decompose.” I’m all for exotic tastes, but this is one I think I’d have to pass on.

Images via wilhelmja [Flickr], Katherine Donaldson [Flickr] and Associated Content

Where’s The Meat?

Beef Tongue, Pit Viper and Horse

The same Japanese ice cream company that brought you the aforementioned fishy flavors has also concocted many out of land-dwelling creatures, including cows, snakes and horses, yes, horses. All three flavors were present at The Yokohama Ice Cream Expo and Beef tongue was surprisingly one of the most popular flavors at the entire convention.

Pit vipers are one of the most deadly snakes in Japan, but they are also considered an aphrodisiac, which is perhaps the only reason an ice cream was made from them, as the flavor is said to be pretty nasty.

Perhaps the most disturbing of the ice creams though, at least to Western sensibilities, is the raw horse flesh ice cream, which is as disturbing as it sounds: a vanilla ice cream with chunks of uncooked horse meat. Apparently, it is not entirely uncommon to see horse meat served in Japanese restaurants as a type of sashimi.

Images via foxypar4 [Flickr], Kat the Acrobat [Vox] and Andrea RF [WordPress]

Taste The British Isles

Don’t think the Japanese are the only ones to make gross flavors of ice cream. Master ice cream maker Gino Soldan recently made headlines when he made creamy desserts from some of the best-known British cuisines, including haggis, pork pie, shortbread and sausages with mash. Soldan, who works in the Morelli’s ice cream parlor in Harrod’s, is no stranger to unique flavors. In fact, he’ll make just about any flavor you want as long as you give him enough advanced notice and once made a pickled onion and white chocolate ice cream as a special request for a party.

If you’re less adventurous, perhaps you’d like to try some of his easier-to-swallow gourmet flavors that include Yorkshire pudding, clotted cream and eccles cake.

Images via Opheliates [Flickr] and Mattingham [Flickr]

Pork Rinds

Here’s one from Mexico, I can’t find much info on it, but apparently the Central Mexican town of Dolores Hidalgo has recently had a huge tourism surge after setting themselves apart in the culinary world by suddenly creating hundreds of new ice cream flavors that you can find in parlors throughout the town. While the pork rinds flavor is one of the most notable, it isn’t one of the favorites, however the avocado and tequila flavors have pretty high ratings.

Candied Bacon

Of course, not all meat-flavored ice creams are necessarily bad. While I understand the frustration some people feel at the whole bacon in everything trend, I do think candied bacon ice cream sounds rather tasty. After all, with a touch of maple syrup and some brown sugar, it already has a very candy-like flavor which seems ideal for ice cream flavoring.

Eat Your Vegetables

Salad

Lest you eat too much meat ice creams and need to follow up with some healthy veggies, relax, you can still keep your meal sundae ready with this salad ice cream. According to Food Network Humor, it has a strawberry base with lettuce, tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers.

Candied Mushroom

Like bacon, there appears to be some way to “candy” mushrooms (I’ve never tried this have any of you?) and once you’ve candied them, they are supposedly pretty tasty when added to ice cream. The flavor seems to be mild, but a little nutty and earthy, which sounds about right for mushrooms.

Chilies

If you ever have trouble deciding if you want your mouth to be freezing cold or burning hot, then Sunny Sky’s “Cold Sweat” ice cream is just what you need. Made with three of the hottest peppers on earth and two killer hot sauces, those who are brave enough to try the burning cold treat are required to sign a waiver before doing so and pregnant women and those with health problems are advised to avoid it all together.

Image via sisterbeer [Flickr]

Spices Are the Spice of Life

Curry

If peppers don’t provide enough spice to kick up your ice cream, perhaps curry will. This recipe sounds surprisingly good to me, though I am far more curry-obsessed than the average person, as it combines sweet Japanese curry and carrots.

Garlic

While many people shiver at the thought of garlic ice cream, it is somewhat well-known and loved, particularly in Northern California, where it is a traditional part of the Gilroy Garlic Fest and a popular menu item at the garlic-themed Stinking Rose restaurant in San Francisco. If you don’t live in the region though, you can always try making your own at home with this recipe.

Image via Mila Sogono [Flickr]

Wasabi

“Japanese horseradish” isn’t just for sushi anymore, you can now try it in ice cream flavor. I’ve seen a few Japanese brand names carrying the flavor in stores, but for those of us who live outside of the flavor-adventure island, we can still make our own with this helpful recipe.

Image via puck77 [Flickr]

Mustard, Roquefort and Grass

France has always worked to be the epicenter of culinary trends and while the Japanese have been munching wasabi and beef tongue, Parisians have been exploring their own unique savory flavors, including mustard,  Roquefort cheese, and even grass. They also have some sweet flavors that sound downright heavenly, like Earl Gray.

Image via roboppy [Flickr]

Barbecue Sauce

Delaware ice cream shop Udder Delight may not be the first company to experiment with bacon ice cream, but they are the first to make their own barbeque sauce ice cream. Cackalacky Spice Sauce is an award winning sauce made by a friend of Chip Hearn, the ice cream parlor owner, which is where Hearn got the idea to incorporate it into his ice cream line ups.

Udder Delight also has one other flavor you might be shocked to hear about –Viagra. It doesn’t actually include any of the miracle pill, but it is instead a blue ice cream with orange and pineapple flavors and the fizziness of Pop Rocks.

Other Weird  and Wacky Flavors

Beer

Beer drinkers rejoice, you no longer have to choose between a frothy cold one and a frozen cold treat. Ben and Jerry’s has a beer sorbet recipe in their cookbook and if you’d like some really gourmet flavors, there’s always the Raspberry Lambic Ice Cream, Apricot Ale Frozen Custard and Speedy Stout Mocha Freeze recipes available here.

Charcoal

Anyone who’s ever had to try activated charcoal tablets will gladly tell you just how gross the stuff tastes. So why someone would purposefully make an ice cream flavored with it is beyond me. Although, I guess if you had to eat charcoal after a potential poison scare, it would probably be moderately better in ice cream form. Maybe parents with nibble-happy children should start stocking their freezers now.

Stilton or Parmesan

I already mentioned the many Roquefort cheese ice creams on the market, but how does stilton or parmesan sound? While I love cheeses, I don’t know if I’m ready for them to start bombarding my ice creams just yet. Although the parmesan is described as having just a little salty flavor, the strong flavor of stilton is sure to be jolting to the taste. Perhaps it would be good as an appetizer with crackers though.

Topping It All Off

Toad Sweat

Toad Sweat is the ideal sundae topping for your cold sweat ice cream. It’s a flavored sauce with chilies so it’s creamy, spicy and sweet all at once. The company sells lemon vanilla, chocolate orange, key lime, and cranberry, all blended with habanero peppers.

I had something similar in the chocolate flavor before and while I’m not a huge fan of spicy foods, I have to say the flavor combination was actually quite good, as it left you craving more ice cream to cool the gentle burn of the delicious chocolate sauce.

Image via Stu Spivack [Flickr]

Big Gay Ice Cream Truck

This East Village ice cream truck offers up some of the most unique Sundaes around, featuring toppings such as caramelized bacon, olive oil with sea salt, curried coconut, pumpkin butter, cayenne pepper and wasabi pea dust. Have any of you seen these trucks around?

I would say the weirdest ice cream flavor I’ve ever tried would probably be aloe vera. While it sounds strange, it was actually quite good. So good, in fact, that when I couldn’t find a recipe for it online, I ended up experimenting until I found my own perfect flavor.

What’s the weirdest flavor you guys have ever tried, and would you try any on this list?

Dondurma — Turkish ice cream — is apparently made differently from ice cream in the United States, and has stickier consistency. Jordan Breindel of Urlesque informs us that in Turkey, streetside vendors of the substance often engage in a performance art as they serve portions to customers. More videos at the link.

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The dessert was delicious: the bananas were chewy, the pineapple sweet and tart, the coconut ice cream rich, cold, and creamy, and the peanuts added the perfect amount of crunch and toasted flavor and the drop of milk brought all of the flavors together.

The bun? It got soggy pretty quickly (as I suspected) and if I ate it any slower, we would have had a real mess on our hands.

But it was a nice take on a portable sundae, minus the paper or plastic cup to throw out at the end! I kept thinking that it would have been interesting with a toasted bun.

If you toast that bread long enough, pretty soon you’ll invent the ice cream cone. Link -via J-Walk Blog

John Harrison

No wonder he’s smiling. John Harrison is, and has been for many years, the official ice cream taster at Dreyer’s Ice Cream and on a daily basis approves or rejects ice cream according to its many different varieties of flavour, colour and texture. It’s a difficult job but someone’s got to do it, and that someone just happens to be John, a man who uses a gold spoon (there’s no aftertaste) to judge ice cream in order to pay the bills. Unsurprisingly, his taste buds are insured for £700,000.

More about the strange world of taste insurance: Link | John Harrison’s website at Dreyer’s – Thanks Dave!

Love iced cream cones but hate the iced cream? Then you’ll love these Cupcake cones on Instructables with plenty of instructions (naturally) to make your own sweettreats at home.

Delicious, clever, and surprising, these cupcakes impersonating ice cream cones are sure to delight!

Now that’s a quote that I can’t begin to dispute.

Link

‘My daughters grew up here, and my father lived here, so I cannot imagine living anywhere else, or anywhere better.’

DeMarco’s daughter Pierina said,

‘He can still get up and down the stairs on his own, and he still laughs and jokes about.

‘His sisters lived to ripe old ages as well, so he must have good genes – either that or all the ice cream he has eaten has done the trick.’

I’ll go with that last idea! Link -via J-Walk Blog

Link

Prosecutors inquired why the machine had registered a "fail," which prevents the car from starting, despite the man’s claims that he had not been drinking.

The man claimed the alcohol reading was the result of eating a Bubble O’ Bill ice cream treat and Magistrate Rod Crisp ordered a test to be performed to back up the claim. Police recorded the man’s blood alcohol content as 0.00 and performed the test a second time after he took a few bites of Bubble O’ Bill, yielding a 0.018 reading.

Link – Thanks Denita!

6. A Diet of Oranges

Idi Amin

Although dictator Idi Amin bestowed upon himself the title of " His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea, and Conqueror of the British Empire [CBE] jaffain Africa in General and Uganda in Particular", in exile he earned the nickname "Dr. Jaffa". Apparently he ate Jaffa oranges like there was no tomorrow, believing that they would act like Viagra for him. He ate fruit pretty much exclusively during this time period – a pretty amazing change for someone who is said to have been a cannibal.

Photo: The Bad Fads Museum

7. Goldfish swallowing
It’s pretty plausible that you’ve heard of someone who ate a live goldfish. I remember hearing about a kid in high school who ate a live minnow, only to puke it back up and discover it was still alive and kicking. Or flopping, as it were.

Anyway, this fad was goldfish sweeping the nation in the 1930s. Not everyone thought it was such a cool thing to do – many towns made it illegal and a Massachusetts Senator tried to pass a bill protecting the fish from "cruel and wanton consumption." Colleges threatened to expel students for such unbecoming behavior.

The fad passed (more or less) but not until after the record was established at 300+ goldfish swallowed by one man in one sitting.

10. Baskin Robbins Ice Cream Diet
Finally, a diet I can get behind. In Howard Hughes’ later years, it’s rumored that he enjoyed a diet of Baskin Robbins ice cream for most of his meals.

One story even goes like this: he harbored a serious addiction to Baskin Robbins’ banana nut flavor. He found out it was being discontinued and panicked, immediately ordering 350 gallons (some stories say 1,000 gallons) of that particular flavor. Less than a week after it arrived, he announced that he was sick of banana nut and only wanted vanilla from that point on.

I can’t find any confirmation for this story, though, so take it with a grain of salt. I, for one, think I could probably manage to survive on nothing but mint chocolate chip for the next 70-80 years.