Refreshing, Creamy and Dense Brain Freeze Ice Creams & Desserts from French Accidents to Ice Cream Cakes

Whether invented by accident or purposefully, ice cream is beloved the world over and there are more varieties than you can imagine with different flavours, texture and some are chewy and utterly dense. Forget fruit dessert recipes for summer, and try ice cream instead, some of the varieties are from sunny Italy known for its gelatos and many other types of ice cream to the Middle East with its denser ice creams and the West with its fanciful creations.

1. Glace plombières

Another French mistake in the form of a dessert, Glace plombières was a neat cover-up after a cook goofed up on a dessert recipe at Napoleon's party being held at the French Plombières-les-Bains for a secret treaty. To salvage the ruins, it was converted into an ice cream and another version says the name is earned because of the French leaden ice cream moulds called plombières.

2. Stracciatella

An ice cream from Italy, it's a little different from gelato and is made with cream, sugar and milk with chocolate bits swirled into the ice cream; stracciare means shredding to pieces. Enrico Panattoni was the mastermind behind this ice cream, who invented this ice cream in 1962 at the Ristorante La Marianna in Bergamo. He was inspired by the technique of cracking eggs into soup, a technique also used by gelato. Stracciatella is characteristically smooth and has a crunch to it because of the ice cream.

3. Queso helado

A Peruvian dessert that is very ice cream-like it comes from the Arequipa region of the country and was made at a convent as a substitute for ice cream. It's made with evaporated milk, whole milk, sugar, egg yolks, cinnamon, cloves and desiccated coconut. The ingredients are cooked, the spices removed then frozen to make the ice cream. It's served in bowls with a sprinkling of cinnamon.

4. Gelato al limone

Lemon is one of the most popular gelato flavours and to spot an authentic ice cream in Italy look for the pale yellow ones, a similar shade to how lemon juice looks is. Gelato al limone is made with cream, milk, sugar, eggs, lemon juice, and lemon zest, and sometimes it uses the handmade Italian limoncello. The lemon flavour is subtle and the gelato is creamy and dense owing to the milk content in it.

5. Ice Cream Cake

Cake sponges typically chocolate layered with vanilla ice cream make the classic ice cream cake. It comes in an assortment of flavours first made in the US and some versions entirely make the ice cream cake out of ice cream only. The ice cream is softened by spreading it multiple times and is also used as a topping with different toppings like sweet dessert sauces, chocolate chips to chocolate shavings or sprinkles. While it's believed to be a typical US dessert, some say it might've come from England given how ice cream was introduced to America via Europe.

6. Gelato alla vaniglia

Perhaps the most minimal of the gelatos, this one is made with milk, cream, eggs, sugar and vanilla only. Like all of the other gelato varieties, this one too is rich, dense and creamy and prone to melting in the heat and sun. It is sometimes adorned with dry fruits and nuts and it's one of the most popular varieties of gelato in Italy.

7. Ice Cream Sandwich

Bitten into a soggy cookie which has a delicious and cold layer of vanilla ice cream in it? That would be the store-bought ones, if you bite into a fresh one the cookies might be warm and the ice cream just firm enough between them. It was first made in New York City in 1899 by a street vendor. What he did was sandwich vanilla ice cream between two wafer layers. Today there are many variations available that use cookies, biscuits to croissants and different ice cream flavours in the filling.

8. Booza

A tad similar to the Turkish Dondurma which is resistant to melting and quite chewy, Booza is an ice cream with roots in Middle Eastern cuisine and the Levant area, in particular Syria. It also uses salep (orchid root extract) and mastic gum like Dondurma which is mixed with milk and cream. Wooden mallets pound this ice cream until it attains that stretchy quality. It somehow is still creamy and quite dense because there are no eggs in it. The most common flavour is Kashta which uses clotted cream flavoured with orange blossom water and rose water. The ice cream also uses a variety of nuts and dried fruits in it, as well as chocolate.