(THISIS)SHIZEN is a Kyoto-based café that has gained popularity mainly thanks to its artistic ice cream cones which resemble intricate flower bouquets.

We use the phrase ‘too beautiful to eat’ to describe food art pretty often here on Oddity Central, but the edible ice-cream bouquets created by (THISIS)SHIZEN really look too pretty to eat, regardless of how tasty they are. Featuring a botanical-themed decor containing potted plants and nature-inspired paintings, this relatively new Japanese café serves a variety of ice-cream bouquets that are only available for a limited time, depending on the season. You can treat yourself to creamy roses, lilac, Japanese camellia, and many more flavorful wonders.

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A UK designer claims to be the first to ever make ice cream with vanilla flavoring sourced from recycled plastic. While no one has tasted it yet, it’s supposed to taste just like regular vanilla ice cream.

As part of her final-year project at Central Saint Martins Design School, Eleonora Ortolani set out to do something no one else had ever attempted before, at least to her knowledge – use a small amount of plastic to make ice cream flavoring. The project, titled Guilty Flavours, was inspired by the young designer’s frustration with how plastic was generally being recycled: being made into products that couldn’t be recycled any further, because it had been mixed with resins or other materials, which she thought was only making the problem worse. Having recently heard about a species of worm that could digest plastic bags, she started wondering if there was any way humans could eat plastic, break it down, and eliminate it for good.

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Gordos, a popular restaurant in Holon, Israel, has been getting a lot of attention online because of its latest dessert – a real toilet bowl full of chocolate ice cream.

I don’t care how much you like chocolate ice cream, you can’t tell me that you don’t find “Third House of Shit”, the controversial dessert available at Gordos just a little bit off-putting. Don’t get me wrong, I for one would still shovel the entire bowl down my throat, but I’d have to get over my initial disgust to do it. I mean, just look at it! The smeared toilet bowl and the way the chocolate ice cream is shaped like turds, it’s definitely not the most appetizing dessert I’ve ever seen. But I guess the wow factor is more important, and so far the unusual dessert has been getting a lot of attention on social media.

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Located in Havana, Cuba, Coppelia Park is the world’s largest ice cream parlor. Also known as the ‘Ice Cream Cathedral, it serves around 30,000 customers per day and up to 600 at a time.

Built in 1966, Cuba’s ‘Parque Coppelia consists of a two-storey domed pavilion inspired by Oscar Niemeyer’s iconic Cathedral of Brasilia outside which people queue for ice cream every single day, and a lush park complete with hundreds of tables where up to 1,000 people can enjoy the frozen treats at a time. The story goes that Fidel Castro ordered the building of Coppelia Park shortly after the success of his Communist revolution. He reportedly ordered twenty-eight containers of ice cream from American producer Howard Johnson’s, and upon tasting it decided to respond by creating something bigger and better, but cheap enough that anyone could afford. His idea was a huge hit, and to this day thousands of people continue to enjoy subsidized ice cream at Coppelia Park, the world’s largest ice cream parlor.

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Food scientists have created a machine that uses that uses pressurized carbon dioxide to turn a liquid ice cream mix into a cold, creamy treat in just three seconds.

The new way to create ‘carbonated ice cream’ patented by Syed Rizvi, professor of food science engineering, and Michael E. Wagner, Ph.D., is very different from traditional ice cream. The latter usually involves a dairy-based mix flowing through a heat-exchanging barrel until it starts to freeze, while the newly-patented method has highly pressurized carbon dioxide passing over a nozzle and drawing in the liquid ice-cream mix. When the carbon dioxide goes from extremely high pressure to a lower pressure, it instantly cools the ice cream mix to about minus 70 degrees C, turning it into the frozen treat we all know and love. This is known as the Joule-Thompson Effect.

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Japanese luxury ice cream brand Cellato recently set a new Guinness record for the world’s most expensive ice cream with a decadent treat priced at a whopping 880,000 yen ($6,700) per portion.

On April 25, a Guinness World Records representative certified Byakuya, Cellato’s new protein-rich ice cream, as the most expensive in the world. It consists of a velvety base made with milk, two types of cheese, egg yolks, and sake leek, and is topped with Parmigiano cheese, white truffle, truffle oil, and gold leaf. The ‘highest grade’ gelato has a faint sweetness, complex taste, and a luxurious, smooth texture. It comes packaged in a stylish black box. It includes a hand-made metal spoon created by Takeuchi craftsmen in Fushimi, Kyoto, using techniques and materials used in the construction of temples and shrines. One 130ml Byakuya ice cream is currently available on the Cellato website for 880,000 yen ($6,700).

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A Chinese premium ice-cream company has sparked controversy on social media because its products allegedly don’t melt even when kept at high temperatures for long periods of time.

Last week, Zhongxuegao, a Chinese ice cream company known for its high-quality products, went viral on social media, after someone posted photos and videos of a Zhongxuegao ice cream next to a thermometer that showed 31 degrees Celsius. The original poster claimed that the frozen treat had been kept at that temperature for around an hour and a half, but it had clearly not melted one bit. The post got a lot of attention and inspired other people to conduct their own experiments, including taking an open flame to the ice cream to see if it melts. Spoiler alert: it didn’t.

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Hirata, a small village in Japan’s Fukushima Prefecture, has become famous for challenging tourists to try its ultra-spicy habanero-laced ice cream.

Can soft-serve ice cream be hot? It sounds nonsensical, but if we’re talking about the cold treat served in Hirata Village, Fukushima, the shoe definitely fits. Sprinkled with varying amounts of habanero pepper powder – depending on the person’s spiciness tolerance – this special ice cream is nothing to mess with. It’s so hot, in fact, that people need to sign a waiver clearing the seller of responsibility before trying it.

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Ever wish you could turn rock-hard ice cream from the freezer into soft-serve ice cream without having to wait for it to melt? Well, now you can, thanks to this bizarre-looking utensil from Japan.

Is it a fork? Is it a spoon? Is it a mixer whisking attachment? Well, it’s a little bit of all of those things. This is the アイホイスプーン (Aihoi Spoon), a special tool designed by a soft-serve ice cream lover for the sole purpose of turning hard tub ice cream into velvety-smooth soft-serve as quickly as possible. And while it may look like just a modified fork, after reading the inventor’s description, you’ll be surprised how much thought went into making the Aihoi Spoon.

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The Below Zero ice cream machine uses a unique technique to freeze alcohol, which allows you to turn beers, cocktails and even spirits into delicious soft-serve ice cream.

Getting drunk on ice cream used to be the stuff of dreams, but thanks to Will Rogers, inventor and owner of WDS Dessert Stations in Hinkley, Illinois, it has become a delicious reality. Rogers, who runs his own ice cream shop, was trying to create a highly-caffeinated espresso ice cream flavor when he realized he could use the same technique with alcoholic beverages. He started experimenting with various gums and stabilizers commonly used in the ice cream industry and eventually patented something called the NEA gel. It’s this magical concoction that allows the alcohol to freeze to a near solid inside the Below Zero ice cream machine.

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A Tokyo dessert shop has become famous for selling a soft-serve ice-cream covered with generous amounts of matcha powder that makes people choke when they eat it.

Remember the cinnamon challenge from about a decade ago? You should, it was one of the most popular internet challenges ever and even has its own Wikipedia page because of that. Anyway, the challenge was to eat a spoonful of ground cinnamon in under 60 seconds, without drinking anything, with the video of the attempt being uploaded to the internet as evidence. I don’t know how popular the cinnamon challenge was in Japan, but it seems that they actually have their own milder version, which involves eating a soft-serve ice-cream covered with matcha powder, without coughing or gagging.

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A Honk Kong entrepreneur has come up with an ingenious way of keeping the semi-autonomous city’s recent protests for democracy alive in people’s memories – by introducing a pungent, throat irritating ice-cream flavor reminiscent of tear gas.

The shop owner, who preferred to remain anonymous, told reporters that he created the new “tear gas” ice cream flavor as a reminder “of the pungent, peppery rounds fired by police on the streets of the semi-autonomous Chinese city during months of demonstrations last year”. After trying several ingredients and combinations, including wasabi or mustard, the owner settled on black pepper, both because of its pungent smell and the way it can irritate the throat, just like actual tear gas.

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If we were to make a global top 100 ice cream flavors list, hot-dog probably wouldn’t make the cut, but that hasn’t stopped American processed meat giant Oscar Mayer from announcing the launch of a hot-dog-flavored ice cream sandwich.

Shaking up the hot-dog scene seems like a tall order, but Oscar Mayer is willing to try with its soon-to-hit-the-shelves hot dog ice cream sandwich. Made up of sweet hot-dog cream, candied hot-dog bits, and spicy Dijon mustard gelato, all squeezed between two soft cookie buns, the upcoming treat is advertised as the best way to enjoy a hot-dog in ice cream form. It’s not clear if this is just a one-time marketing stunt or a permanent addition to the Oscar Mayer family of products, but one thing is for sure, hot-dog ice cream sandwich is a real thing.

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A cafe in Taiwan has been getting a lot of attention online for serving puppy-shaped ice-cream that most people describe as adorable and terrifying at the same time.

When you think about food, the first thing that probably comes to mind is taste, but the fact is that eating is a visual experience as well, and sometimes you can be put off by a dish, even though you know it is delicious. That’s kind of the vibe I’m getting from the puppy-shaped ice-cream served at the Sowing the Sweets cafe, in Taiwan. I’m sure it tastes good – it’s ice-cream, after all – but at the same time I find the idea of digging into this realistic puppy with a spoon disturbing and morbid.

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Researchers at the Biotherapy Development Research Center Co. in Kanazawa, Japan, have come with a 100%-natural solution to the age-old problem of melting ice-cream. By using polyphenol found in strawberry, they can keep a popsicle from melting for hours, on a hot summer day.

Believe it or not, the secret ingredient for “unmeltable” ice-cream was discovered by mistake. The Kanazawa research center had asked a local pastry chef to create new confectionery using strawberry polyphenol, in an attempt to find new uses for strawberries not good enough to be sold as fresh fruit. However, the chef later reported that  that “dairy cream solidified instantly when strawberry polyphenol was added”. That made it redundant in confectionery, but researchers at the center realized that polyphenol could be used to make ice-cream melt a lot slower.

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