Rich and Creamy Brain Freeze Ice Creams & Desserts From the Italian Tartufo Di Pizzo to the Afghan Sheer Yakh

From being sold by street vendors to gracing the gourmet gelaterias in Italy, ice cream comes in many forms and all of them are cold and differ from commercialised frozen desserts. Real ice cream uses milk, cream, sugar and other ingredients with tame differences in the way it's made. So, here are some of the world’s best ice creams that the locals love on particularly hot days, with the most delicious dessert recipes, handmade or made in an ice cream maker using the best of local flavours.

1. Tartufo di Pizzo

These are ice cream balls that look like truffle balls, but larger. It's from Pizzo in Italy and was invented in 1952 by Guiseppe De Maria (Don Pippo) who was a gelato maker in Gelateria Dante. He made a gelato with a molten dark chocolate core encased in a chocolate-hazelnut gelato mix which was rolled in a cocoa powder. It's been recognised by the Italian government as one of the finest agricultural products of the region, which serves as the base for many virtues that use additives.

2. Havij bastani

If you have heard of the ice cream float, this is Iran’s version of that but it forgoes the usual elements and uses carrot juice instead of any kind of soft drink or soda. It's topped with a vanilla-flavoured ice cream that might sometimes be saffron infused too. It's topped with pistachios, cardamoms and cinnamon.

3. Gelato al fior di latte

The expansive name translates to flower milk which has a subtle milky flavour because it's plain milk ice cream made with milk, cream and sugar. It stands out because of its simplicity and said to be favoured by gelato makers and can be a daunting task to master making it because it's unadorned.

4. Hokey Pokey Ice Cream

Named after the little honeycomb toffee bits dispersed in a vanilla ice cream, this ice cream was invented by a local New Zealand teenager called Brian Simon. His father had employed some Dutch men who worked at his Newjoy factory in Dunedin and also another job at the local Cadbury factory that produced Crunchies. He asked them to bring him some and he sprinkled it on plain ice cream, his father got wind of this and got the men to sell it. This was in 1953, and it was an instant success because of its extra-sweet nature that was hard to come by in the aftermath of two world wars.

5. Sheer yakh

Translating to frozen milk or cold milk in the Dari (Persian) language, Afghanistan’s Sheer yakh uses the same ingredients as Kulfi but the preparation methods differ. The ingredients go into a metal container that is inserted into another metal container that has ice and salt in it. The container with the ingredients is rotated manually with an occasional stir until the ingredients start to freeze. The ice cream is dense and creamy and uses flavours ranging from cardamom, rose water, and salep (wild orchid root powder). It’s a popular street food item and often garnished with chopped nuts and cream.

6. Helado de paila

This is an artisanal ice cream that has the quality of sorbet and comes from Ecuador’s Ibarra. It's made with fruit juice, sugar and ice with fruits pulped in; it comes in a variety of flavours. The ice cream is labour-intensive, churned by hand inside a bronze or copper pot (pail) sitting in ice. The first few Helado de paila were said to have been made from the glacier's snow on top of the Imbabura volcano. This tradition was started by someone called Rosalía Suárez, who ran an ice cream shop in Ibarra, that is run by her descendants today, who keep the tradition alive.

7. Soursop Ice Cream

A Caribbean ice cream popular in Trinidad and Tobago, it's named after the fruit used in the ice cream – soursop. Soursop is a tropical fruit that grows year long, is native to the Caribbean and grows in some parts of the Americas, with a sweet and citrusy taste and a thick texture that reminds one of a banana. The ice cream uses this ripe fruit mixed in with condensed milk, water, cornstarch, a little salt, and a splash of aromatic bitters. This concoction is churned in an ice cream maker and frozen until firm.

8. Tutti Frutti ice cream

Ending with the classic favourite among adults, kids and the elderly tutti frutti (an Italian term meaning all fruits) ice cream is from England. It's a mix of a variety of fruit flavours with pieces of candied or fresh fruit dispersed in the ice cream. This flavour surfaced in England sometime in 1860 and made it to the US soon after, from where the rest of the world, including ours adapted the recipe to our local tastes.