Pig Blood Ice Cream Sounds Like a Truly Chilling Halloween Treat
Actually, it sounds more like a "trick" than a "treat."
Halloween is usually all about the candy – and costumes and carved pumpkins and kids shuffling adorably from door to door. You don’t usually think about it as being an ice cream holiday. Except of course what isn’t an ice cream holiday?
But if you were going to pack Halloween into to pints, what would it taste like?
Well, probably something like the array of ice cream flavors boutique West Coast ice cream shop Salt & Straw has released as part of its limited-run seasonal “Spooktacular Series.”
Some of them sound downright scary. (Cue creepy chain-clanking, moany-howly, evil-laugh sound effects here.)
The most hair-raising – arguably more “ew” than “boo” -- is undoubtedly Dracula’s Blood Pudding, which contains real blood. Mercifully the blood in question is from a pig, not a human, and the scoop shop, which has locations in Portland, Oregon, Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego, has combined it with “a heady combination of warm spices and cream,” promising that it will make you “squirm with delight.” Hmmm. Maybe.
Speaking of squirming, another of Salt & Straw’s Halloween flavors – Creepy Crawly Critters -- contains real crickets (covered with dark chocolate) and mealworms (coated with coconut toffee-brittle) from the Oakland, California, bug-snack emporium Don Bugito. The “swarms” of edible insects are all tucked into a “light and fresh green-grass ice cream,” Salt & Straw notes. It actually sounds weirdly good, except … bugs.
Two of the other flavors in the collection -- the Great Candycopia (salted butterscotch ice cream loaded with “homemade snickers, twix chunks, heath bars, and peanut butter cup”) and a “so good, it’s scary” vegan take on PSL called Mummy’s Pumpkin Spiced Potion (“heady spices and dried pumpkin Pyschocandy tea from August Tea in coconut cream” flecked with “candied pumpkin bits”) – sound sweet, seasonally appropriate and straightforward enough.
But the last one may be most intriguing and, appropriately, hard to pin down: Essence of Ghost. It’s a “deep foggy sherbet” with “jets of tasty gray” that combine to create “a shrill set of flavors that are bitter, sweet, and slightly smoky,” according to Salt & Straw’s description.
Available through October, those who aren’t on the West Coast can order all five flavors in the spooky series online – they’re packed on dry ice and shipped in a reusable, insulated cooler -- for $65 plus shipping.
Trick or treat? Judge for yourself ...
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