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SURVIVAL OF THE GENEROUS

Anthropologists know that humans have been sharing resources for hundreds of thousands of years – in fact, it’s what led to the incredible population growth that made humans an endemic species! We increasingly realized that dividing resources such as food and mating opportunities helped the largest number of individuals and their offspring thrive, and those that carried the tendency to cooperate thrived and grew. Over the millennia, our brains naturally developed to instinctively recognize the benefits of sharing, which helped us evolve into the social creatures we are today.

COMMUNITY-BUILDING

This tactical advantage wasn’t solely for basic survival – sharing with others has also been crucial for building strong social bonds within a group. When we share with others, we create a sense of trust and belonging that leads to greater cooperation and a stronger sense of community. Getting along and working together was crucial for the survival of early societies, which led to cooperative initiatives like agriculture and the construction of cities.

EMPATHY

While we traveled down this evolutionary path, we unintentionally developed something curious; empathy. Our ability to experience empathy and choose to be kind or generous is universal, which leads most anthropologists to believe that it develops independently of culture – it’s innate.

While evolutionary principles generally focus on survival of the self, being nudged to actively value the lives of others seems to be in our best interests as well – the brain even releases ‘happy’ hormones such as serotonin when we engage with people we empathize with and care about to encourage sharing behavior!

While there’s a fair chance that sharing has roots in our neurology, we’ll always continue showing our loved ones how much we care. Come to think about it, the best way to do it might just be a day to celebrate those bonds with unlimited ice cream and connection activities in Museum of Ice Cream!

We’re scooping some delicious deals and limited edition treats this Love Month, so check out our ticketing page if you’re still looking for a sweet celebration of the love that makes us human.

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PLANT-BASED DAIRY

Plant-based dairy is now an unstoppable force on the culinary scene, from savory to sweet! No longer does dairy-free only apply to sorbets – you can easily find creamy scoops that incorporate a wide variety of plant-based products.

Ice cream with the lushest mouth-feel often relies on fat molecules to create a velvety sensation, which means that you should look out for frosty desserts that use high-fat content vegan alternatives. The best examples would be coconut, almond or cashew milk, especially because these particular vegan milks don’t develop a greasy residue and add a subtly refreshing tang to flavors like chocolate or cookies and cream!

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Museum of Ice Cream Singapore is scooping plenty of plant-based treats that include coconut milk, which is a pretty cool callback to their South-East Asian roots! Many traditional Singaporean desserts incorporate coconut cream to create indulgent desserts like pulut hitam (a black sticky rice pudding with coconut milk for an extra indulgent kick), which we’ve turned into a refreshing potong popsicle!

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UN-CONE-VENTIONAL SCOOPS

Classic flavors will always hold a special place in our hearts, but life needs a lil bit of adventure every now and again! 2022 saw the celebration of completely new flavors that step out of the staple Neapolitan favorites, with exciting twists like savory ice cream, exotic combinations and novel modes of consumption.

We’re actually serving up an incredible example at Museum of Ice Cream Chicago. Our team has ice cream-ified one of the Windy City’s signature staples and created a frosty treat with the best kind of cognitive dissonance; hot dog-flavored ice cream nestled between fluffy buns and a crunchy cornichon! Dare you take a bite?

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PROBIOTICS

Functional food is quickly becoming the next frontier in culinary innovation, especially when it comes to new dessert concepts! While eating healthy is pretty familiar, functional desserts can go a lot farther than keeping to the food pyramid, and one of the newest ice cream inventions to hit the market is probiotic ice cream.

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Probiotic ingredients refer to components that help to foster a balanced community of microorganisms in your digestive system (just a lil clarification – your gut is already home to a host of microorganisms that have a symbiotic relationship with you and helps cultivate ideal gut health!). In ice cream production, the most common probiotic ingredient would be kefir yogurt, which comes from fermenting milk in a controlled environment along with live cultures introduced in the mix. Think of it like frozen yogurt full of teeny tiny helpers!

Museum of Ice Cream is always trying to be one step ahead of the curve, and we’re inviting you to be at the forefront of ice cream innovation along with us! Fill your day with unlimited ice cream in the coolest flavors and forms of 2023, but don’t forget to bring along your sweetest cone-panions to share in the joy of discovering something new!

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There are some things that immediately herald the end of year – the scent of pine, steaming hot cocoa, the jingle of carols – it’s a season that assails the senses in the best way possible. It’s the sweet treats, though, that really completes our holiday spirit, so here are some things you might not know about your favorite Christmas treats like apple cider, gingerbread and eggnog! APPLE CIDER Apple cider has long been produced in the fall season in Europe and North America, which meant that it became a traditional autumn and winter beverage – naturally, mulled apple became a staple at Christmas dinners and winter fairs! By the late 1700s, apple cider was so ubiquitous in North America that one in ten family-run farms owned cider presses to make the drink. It wasn’t just for drinking either – clean water wasn’t as easy to come by during this period in time, so many baptisms in early Christian communities were allegedly performed with cider rather than water! Oh, and have you ever heard the Christmas carol that  goes, “Here we come a-wassailing…” and wondered what that meant? Wassailing refers to an ancient English custom that involved gathering in apple orchards with votive offerings for nature spirits and singing to the trees in order to ensure a successful harvest for the cider-making season. Apart from showing how much the season revolved around apples, this custom evolved into the caroling tradition that we still love today! ‍ EGGNOG While this traditional Christmas treat often contains a zesty splash of alcohol, eggnog has always been a popular beverage that all can find comfort in! This creamy concoction is believed to have originated in medieval Europe, with records of monks crafting early iterations of it called ‘posset’ as far back as the 13th century. By the 17th century, the most common eggnog recipes in Europe involved a base of sherry, eggs, sugar and milk, which were pretty expensive goods at the time! Naturally, it was an uncommon treat that was saved for special celebrations like Christmas, especially when it included super rare spices like nutmeg and cinnamon. It’s a commonly held belief that George Washington popularized eggnog in the United States, with local legends detailing how he served super boozy mixes for guests at Mount Vernon. The estate’s current historian, Mary Thomson, finds herself having to repeat every year that eggnog was not, in fact, included in any culinary records from his time there! Like many traditional recipes, it’s hard to say what the most faithful version of this beautiful beverage would be! We’ve also decided to throw our hat into the ring with a recipe of our own, so why not come down to Museum of Ice Cream Singapore for an eggless eggnog that’s just as creamy and indulgent? ‍ GINGERBREAD The history of gingerbread goes back A LOT further than you’d expect and was enjoyed across more than one continent in different variations! The first mention of baked food resembling gingerbread came from a 2400 BC recipe found in Greece, although the ginger root itself was first cultivated in ancient China for medicinal purposes. Gingerbread’s popularity peaked in 992 AD when an Armenian monk named Gregory of Nicopolis brought gingerbread to Western Europe, where its popularity quickly grew as a warm treat, as well as a cure for indigestion! Over the centuries, this treat has largely been baked as either a soft cake loaf or a crisp biscuit, with its use in elaborate confectionary decorations starting during the first Elizabethian era in England. By the time the 1600s rolled around, bakeries in Germany were displaying artistic renditions of gingerbread houses to entice their clientele, and this quintessentially Christmas display continues today! In fact, the record for the largest gingerbread house is currently held by Mall of America, which spanned about 40000 square feet and used 4000 gingerbread bricks. It was so big that it even required a building permit to construct! Gingerbread goes incredibly well with full flavors like vanilla – we’ve actually created our own blend of this with a signature gingerbread milkshake available at all MOIC Speakeasys! ‍ We’re still sleighing the holiday season at Museum of Ice Cream with the pinkest winter wonderland you could stroll through! Grab the sweetest peeps in your life to complete the perfect year-end holiday with unlimited desserts, interactive installations and gorgeous Pinkmas play spaces.

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If your first guess was that it had to be sometime around the invention of the electric freezer, you’d be sort of right. The arrival of commercially available refrigeration kickstarted an explosion of frozen inventions, which led us to the ice cream we all love today! However, the origins of ice cream as a type of frozen dessert goes further back than you’d expect.

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We’d need to acknowledge, first, that there’s really no definite answer to this question. There’s still a lot of debate about the world’s first ice cream dessert, and we only know as much as the historical accounts we’ve been able to discover. Civilization is built from uncountable cultures, each with rich culinary traditions that evolved over tens of thousands of years, and many of them shared a love of ice cream just like us!

The oldest mentions of frozen treats are fragmentary records that stretch back about 3000 years (we know, it’s crazy!). In some Middle Eastern sources, King Solomon was described as having a penchant for frozen fruit purees, and the Old Testament mentions frozen goat milk as a treat that Abraham enjoyed. In ancient Mesopotamia, snow was mixed with mashed fruits for royal snacks, and ancient Egyptians served crushed ice from the Lebanese mountains with fruit juices.

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Of all the famous historical figures who loved ice cream, you might be surprised at which one may have given us one of the oldest recorded ice cream recipes; Alexander the Great! Known for his military brilliance that helped him conquer his way from Greece to India in the 300s BCE, accounts of his life described his love for mounds of packed snow and ice flavored with honey and nectar.

A more likely candidate, however, for the birthplace of ice cream is ancient Persia, in modern-day Iran. By 400 BCE, the Persians had developed sophisticated refrigeration techniques with innovations like the yakhchāl, which were large underground chambers insulated against the desert heat. Being able to effectively store ice from the mountains meant that iced desserts flourished across the region, usually made from mixtures of ice, honey, masticated fruits, spices like saffron and delicacies like faludeh (slender strings of rice noodles). Modern iterations are still sold at Bastani (traditional Persian ice cream shops) in Iran today, which could also mean that it could very well be one of the oldest surviving ice cream treats in the world!

The following centuries saw a flurry of frozen desserts crop up around the world, spreading from the Mongol Empire into China, India and subsequently Europe. Today, we can enjoy an ever-changing landscape of ice cream that keeps our taste buds tickled; so the next time you take a lick of your favorite scoop, take a moment to appreciate all the ice cream pioneers that have come before us!

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