The latest TikTok food fad isn’t cool, it’s cold

You scream, I scream, we all scream for ice cream, and then we throw it at each other. If the latter half of that sentence sounds bizarre to you, that’s because you have not yet seen the latest TikTok trend where ice cream shop workers throw a scoop of their product at another team member. Food and Wine dubs this the ‘Ice Cream Challenge‘ but what I find challenging is figuring out how this odd behavior got started in the first place.

Of course now it’s just “for the ‘gram” (for the ‘tok?), and Food & Wine says the fad is “just an entertaining way for ice cream shop employees to either amuse themselves or their customers,” but I suspect there was a backstory to the first instance that’s been lost among the imitators. The premise is that a customer orders a certain flavor but is handed the wrong one and complains about it, so the ice cream shop employee takes the cone/scoop and chucks it at an unsuspecting coworker, often hitting them in the face. Naturally, because the videos are going viral, there are dozens of iterations currently making the rounds. The trend is over two weeks old, so it’s already ancient in TikTok time and will soon be replaced by the next “challenge”.

If hearing about this trend first makes you sad for the wasted ice cream and second makes you hungry for some, look no further than the EYB Library for inspiration. There are 10,000+ online recipes for ice cream and frozen desserts so you have ample choices. Perhaps you want to celebrate the Barbie movie with Beet ice cream with mascarpone, orange zest, and poppy seeds from Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home or stick to something more traditional like Vanilla ice cream from The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz. I opted for the Black raspberry sherbet from Hello My Name is Ice Cream by Dana Cree, pictured above. That recipe alone is worth the price of the book, which is my current favorite tome about the subject. Whatever you decide to make, I hope you savor each delicious bite and don’t feel compelled to throw it at anyone.