Dessert is a worldwide favorite. When the weather gets hot, a cold dessert always does the trick, no matter where you are in the world. Whether your restaurant is trying to expand its frozen dessert offerings, revamp the menu, or add some variety, we can help. Keep reading to learn about five quick and creative frozen treats you can serve at your restaurant.
Creative Frozen Treat American Classic: Banana Split
Ice cream has existed for centuries, originating as a combination of frozen milk and rice pudding in China in 200 A.D. Different flavors of sweet ice were popular in ancient China, Persia, and Greece before that. After Marco Polo brought this creamy frozen treat back to Italy in the 1200s and Catherine de Medici brought it to France in the 1500s, ice cream quickly spread around Europe. An Italian New York immigrant opened the first ice cream parlor in the Americas in 1770. Thomas Webb of Toronto started selling ice cream in Canada in 1850, and the rest is history.
Your restaurant can participate in this history by putting a banana split on the menu. While banana splits were invented in the United States in the early 1900s, they are popular all over the world due to their delicious combination of flavors and customization options. Your patrons can design their own desserts, limited only to what you have available in your restaurant. Once they know what they want, it’s quick and easy for you to put together. If you have your own commercial soft serve machine, then the “homemade” ice cream will make this treat even more delicious.
The classic banana split recipe features three scoops of ice cream: vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry. After cutting a banana in half length-wise, these three scoops of ice cream lie between the banana halves in a dish. Crushed pineapple sits atop the vanilla scoop, hot fudge flows from the chocolate scoop, and strawberries rest on the strawberry scoop. Whipped cream, crushed nuts, and a cherry are all traditionally placed atop these other toppings.
Delicious Germany Ingenuity Frozen Treat: Spaghettieis
Turn classic ice cream into something amazing with German Spaghettieis also a popular frozen treat. This ice cream dish launched in Mannheim, Germany in the 1960s and immediately confused children who wanted ice cream, not spaghetti. While the creative treat wasn’t well known outside of Germany for a long time, social media has brought the world’s attention to the interesting dessert, and more restaurants are serving it.
You’ll only need a few tools and ingredients to include your restaurant in the growing list of those who serve this ice cream twist. Firstly, you’ll need vanilla or some other white-colored ice cream because it makes the best mock noodles. You’ll also need some type of “pasta sauce.” Most people use a strawberry puree to replace traditional marinara, although you can use chocolate to act as a Bolognese sauce. Depending on which sauce you choose, you’ll want something white and shredded like white chocolate or coconut to look like cheese or something darker like nuts to compliment the chocolate. The most important tool is the Spätzle or potato press.
Start by placing your white ice cream into the press and then squeezing it to create the noodle-like ice cream strands. Place that in a bowl, and then pour the desired sauce on top. Garnish with the appropriate toppings and serve to an amazed audience.
Japanese Sweet Shaved Ice Frozen Treat: Kakigōri
Take your dinner guests to Japan with kakigōri, a sweet flavored shaved ice invented during the Heian period. It was reserved for aristocracy during this time. The ice was shaved from northern climates during the cold months, stored, and then sweetened and served in an expensive process. The first store to sell kakigōri to normal Japanese citizens opened in the late 1800s, and the dessert spread from there. Japan now celebrates Kakigōri Day annually on July 25th.
You can find kakigōri frozen treat all over the world, which means it’s a great choice to serve at your restaurant. While it doesn’t use ice cream as its base, many of your patrons will probably find the change refreshing, especially those who are lactose intolerant. You will need an electric ice shaver to make it, although Japanese street vendors shave the ice by hand. Your choice between these options will depend on how much equipment space you have in your commercial kitchen and how popular this dessert becomes.
This dessert is fairly easy to make if you shave the ice ahead of time or use an electric shaver. Simply scoop out the desired amount of shaved ice, flavor with the syrup of your customer’s choice, and add any desired toppings. Traditional flavors include strawberry, cherry, lemon, grape, melon, and green tea. Traditional toppings include condensed or evaporated milk, mochi, sweet red bean paste, and green tea ice cream.
Atlantic Canadian Goodness Frozen Treat: Blueberry Grunt
No one knows exactly when blueberry grunt, otherwise known as “slump” or “fungy,” was invented, but we’re all grateful for it. We know it dates to the French settlement on the Atlantic Canadian coast, as they frequently cooked blueberries. Many believe that it made its way to the Hudson Bay in the 1700s. No matter when it came about, we all love this delicious, fruity treat with its funny name, inspired by the grunting sound of bubbling blueberries.
To create this frozen treat iconic dish, you’ll need to make your own blueberry compote with fresh or frozen blueberries, sugar, and lemon juice. Some people prefer to add cinnamon for extra flavor. As your compote cooks, make a tea biscuit dough. Once your blueberry compote is bubbling, scoop the tea biscuit dough and place the scoops on top of the blueberries. Cover and simmer until the tea biscuits are cooked, and then serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.
For variety, you can make a grunt with other fruits or sweet vegetables, such as strawberries and rhubarb. You would follow the same compote and tea biscuit process with those fillings. However, the blueberry flavor is the most popular and iconic grunt.
Amazing Australian Milkshakes Frozen Treat: Freakshakes
This is perhaps the newest dessert on this frozen treat list, but it’s worthy of worldwide fame. The Freakshake originated at an Australian café in 2016. The café’s owner, Anna Petridis, is a lifelong foodie who wanted to create something exciting for people to eat. She eventually settled on huge shakes that include more than just ice cream. Her original Freakshakes were topped with piles of whipped cream, cookies, fruit, and brownies. These creations blew up after Petridis posted them online. You can now find dessert cafés featuring their own crazy milkshakes all over the world.
There’s no standard recipe for a crazy milkshake. All you need is ice cream, milk, toppings, and your own creativity. You can try to replicate iconic milkshake flavors like cookies and cream, and take them to the next level with impressive towers of whipped cream, chocolate, and cookies. You can also get to work creating your own flavors.
Banana splits, Spaghettieis, kakigōri, blueberry grunt, and Freakshakes are five quick and creative frozen treats for your restaurant. This international list will pull in diverse clients and adventurous eaters who want to experience something new. If you want to start creating these frozen treats, invest in a commercial soft serve machine and all the other necessary supplies, and start serving!
