Summer is hot, and if you live in the Middle East like I do, then hot is an understatement.
The sweltering and punishing heat is brutal, but it is also the perfect temperature to enjoy the greatest of cold treats: Ice cream.
The king of dairy desserts. The flavorful scoops of milky delight bring smiles of joy to everyone who eats them - unless you're lactose intolerant. Then maybe you're less inclined to enjoy them.
Plenty of lists exist fighting over which flavor of ice cream is the best - spoiler alert, it's peanut butter cup, and it isn't a contest - but how many lists exist documenting some of the weirdest ones that exist? The ones so unusual that you raise your eyebrows in sheer befuddlement that someone thought of such a bizarre choice.
It turns out there are quite a few lists, actually. But we're still going to do one ourselves. Does that mean we'll actually go out and eat them? No. We don't have time to fly around the world just to taste weird ice cream flavors, after all. So we're just going to list them instead.
So, without further ado, some of the weirdest ice cream flavors you won't believe exist.
Planet Earth
So this ice cream flavor is, based on the name, the flavor of the literal planet. What are we supposed to make of that?
Created by Van Leeuwen, this ice cream flavor contains everything from matcha to sea salt, blue raspberry, and spirulina. The actual flavor itself is reportedly more akin to blue raspberry, but with a name like Planet Earth, what are we supposed to expect? I mean, have you ever actually tasted the Earth? It doesn't have an "earthy texture," so much as it is literally eating dirt.
Whose branding idea was this?
Whisky prune
Okay, so rum raisin ice cream is a flavor, right? We've all seen it, and if you haven't had it, the name may seem off-putting, but it's still widely beloved and enjoyed.
But whisky prune sounds like someone heard rum raisin was a thing and just decided to look up a synonym in a thesaurus to make their own, or that they wanted to make rum raisin but lacked rum and raisins.
This ice cream is sold at Simmo's in Australia, and it actually includes whisky and whisky-soaked prunes in its ice cream. But... why?
But apparently, it's well-liked among locals, so who am I to judge?
Knafeh
This ice cream is sold by the historic Israeli ice cream chain Shfaram Ice Cream, which has experimented with many rather interesting ice cream flavors made with Middle Eastern flavors. Knafeh is one such example.
For those of you who don't know, knafeh is a delightful dessert with string pastry soaked in attar syrup. It can include everything from cheese to cream and nuts.
Someone had the idea of making ice cream out of this.
Honestly, though, once you get the rather bizarre image of string pastry-covered ice cream that the name implies, it actually sounds delicious.
Dill pickle ice cream
What in the name of all that is good and holy in the world is this abomination?
So this is complicated, too. Many reports online credit dill pickle ice cream to Baskin-Robbins, including their own website. However, at least in recent years, it has also been widely reported to be fake.
But Baskin-Robbins still gets in on the joke, releasing a list of ice cream sundae recipes to make combining their ice cream and... pickles. For some horrific reason.
But to make it worse, some people actually have sold this stuff. In 2018, for example, the Lucky Pickle Dumpling Co. reportedly started selling this crime against nature, humanity, and God for $5 in New York.
Full disclosure: I loathe pickles. Despite my New York Jewish upbringing, I strongly believe pickles to be one of the most disgusting foods ever created.
And that is why the blasphemous combination of these zombified cucumbers with something as wonderful as ice cream makes me so furious and so depressed.
Charoset
I know brands try to make foods more relevant for holidays, as well as trying to meet the challenges of dietary restrictions such as on Passover, but charoset ice cream is just... just wrong.
At least, in theory. In reality, Ben & Jerry's regular Passover special isn't too bad. It's far from the best flavor, and I wouldn't even go so far as to call it "good." But this combination of apples, cinnamon, walnuts, and honey does work to an extent.
I mean, I guess you could always have worse than this, right? But Ben & Jerry's has come up with other weird ice cream flavors before, such as the infamous...
Schweddy Balls
Enough said.