This has been an incredible year for american ice cream. Here are the highlights we’ve seen so far and a few we have to look forward to. Because ice cream season isn’t over, even if summer almost is.
January:
- The co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s, Ben Cohen, creates a flavor dedicated to presidential candidate Bernie Sanders as mentioned in one of our previous articles. Called Bernie’s Yearning, the container promises a “political revolution inside.” Sure enough: It’s a pint of mint ice cream with a disk of chocolate on top that’s meant to “represent the majority of gains that have gone to the top 1 percent since the end of the recession,” according to the Bernie’s Yearning packaging.
February:
- House of Flavors, a long-standing Ludington, Mich., diner, announces that it will break the world’s record for the longest ice cream dessert. Its road to success: a half-mile-long ice cream sundae. (The current world record holder was the city of Manurewa, an Auckland, New Zealand, suburb.) The dessert was forecast to include 12,700 scoops of ice cream and take up eight blocks. Spoiler alert: They did it and are waiting for their Guinness certification.
March:
- After creating a frenzy on both coasts, Thai rolled ice cream starts making legitimate inroads across the country. One of the notable spots is 8 Farenheit in Atlanta. To achieve the adorable, and photogenic, rolls of ice cream, a custard base (flavors include coffee and green tea) with mix ins (from peaches to Oreos) is slathered on an icy cold negative-eight-degree plate, then scraped up into rounds and arranged in a cup. Toppings run the gamut from bananas to gummy bears.
April:
- With hundreds of people lining up outside their two existing stores, the owners of New York’s Black Tap Burger announce that they’re expanding to the Upper West Side and Midtown. The burgers get great reviews, but it’s the outrageous candy, cake, and cookie-packed milkshakes that have have generated the gigantic following. Among the ones that dominate Instagram: The bright pink and blue, confection-studded Cotton Candy, and the Birthday Cake, which has an entire piece of cake on top. If you think you’ve seen these over-the-top milkshakes before, you’re right. Australia went through this moment last year with a phenomenon better known as the Freakshake.
- That same month, Hillary Clinton pays a much documented visit to Mikey Likes It, a tiny ice cream shop in New York City’s East Village, to sample a sundae-cum-ice cream sandwich created especially for her by owner Michael Cole. The Victory Mac Daddy is a magnificent chocolate-on-chocolate number, comprosed of chocolate waffles, milk chocolate ice cream, crushed Oreos, and chocolate chips. Even the whipped cream is chocolate-flavored, and the cherry chocolate-covered.
- And just in time for Coachella, burger chain Sonic Drive-In announces that it will create square shakes that are designed specifically for, and sold via, Instagram. The deconstructed takes are deliberately hipster-oriented on classic Sonic shakes, served in a square glass jar. Flavors include Vanilla Bean, Buttered Toffee, Bourbon Brown Sugar, and Dulce De Leche.June:
- Gelato-go introduces the custom flavors for restaurants such as Thyme, Marshmallows Gelato, Cherry Basil and many others to open its market to restaurants and wholesale. Next year 2017 might be the year of Gelato in the US..