Next time you’ve got a hankerin’ for some muffins but all that can be found in your kitchen is a tub of Ben & Jerry’s, you’re in luck! Add two cups (about 250 grams) of self-rising flour to a little over a pint of ice cream and bake it for 425 degrees until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean (about 20-25 minutes). It makes sense, right? Ice cream has the eggs, milk, and sugar you’d normally need to add to flour to make muffins. If you feel like gettin' fancy you can whip up some Half Baked or Cherry Garcia baked goods. Bonus points for DIY frosting!
Other things you can do with ice cream? Get your Viagra on and help heal Rwanda (seriously). Oh, and do a four-day cleanse. Yes, that's a four-day ice cream cleanse. This is a real thing that's happening in southern California. Kippy’s, an ice cream shop in Venice, touts the benefits of its four-day ice cream cleanse during which you eat, wait for it . . . . nothing but ice cream. Five pints a day! If this remind you of that time you had your tonsils out, it's worth noting that Kippy’s ice cream is not comprised of the usual 31 flavors: this is organic, raw, coconut-based, non-dairy ice cream. They offer their take on traditional flavors like Orange Crème, but really differentiate with wackier ones like Master Cleanse (lemon, cayenne, honey).
And last on the list of strange and wonderful ice cream happenings is an augmented reality app (courtesy of Häagen-Dazs) that tells you just how long to wait before digging into that pint of Dulce de Leche. Apparently, it takes precisely two minutes for Häagen-Dazs ice cream to soften to the optimal consistency and for its flavors to fully bloom—in wine, this is called "breathing," in ice cream it's "tempering." The app, called Concerto Timer, features a holographic-like classical musician who plays a little ditty when you point your phone’s camera at the lid of the ice cream carton. When the tune’s over, the ice cream is ready to eat, with its flavors in full effect! Even better, if you and your bestie are both digging into your own pints, you can use both lids to create a mini-orchestra right on your tabletop (although the spectacle seems to be limited to two musicians for now). The app is all the rage on iTunes and we're hoping Häagen-Dazs will let Android users in on the fun soon.
