Melting point

Cones, tubs, lollies, stuffed buns and more – there's no end to ice cream innovation. Ao Lan Guo explores recent trends

Ice cream innovation

You could say that every summer is an ice cream summer, but then a cardigan, wellies and umbrella have been the season’s must-have accessories in Britain for many a year. Of course, 2026 is not one of those. Instead, we do all ‘scream for ice cream’, and luckily for us, it is everywhere, in many forms: at pop-ups and new shops with mad flavours, and at every meal should you so choose. (If anyone has any tips for brioche con gelato for breakfast, please do share.)

So, this week, Good Food’s content assistant Ao Lan Guo visits the Xi Home x Darlish collab for a ‘bao-wich’ (which sounds excitingly similar to that brioche) and digs into her ice cream memory banks. At the end you’ll find a recipe for cherry and pistachio no-churn ice cream, a fitting flavour for summer 2026. Over to Ao Lan…

Melting point

In Shanghai, we didn’t have ice cream trucks or seaside kiosks. We had ColdStone, Dairy Queen, Baskin Robbins and Häagen-Dazs. My family ate ice cream cake on birthdays, ice cream mooncakes for the Mid-Autumn Festival, and my brother and I got handed ice cream bars for doing well at school. There were outliers: the sorbets that came in fruit shells (rocked my world), the “green tongue” ice pop (绿舌头) that turned bendy and jelly-like with each lick (a nightmare for teachers trying to get their students to behave), and the red bean ice bars my mum would bring home from that one Japanese store we loved but could never pronounce. Back then, ice cream was either ritual or reward. Now, it’s novelty (hello, TCM gelato, mala ice cream, and 文创雪糕).

Green tongue ice lolly. As fun as it is tasty.

I came of age in New York, a city that wears food innovation like a personality trait. A place where people queue two hours for the newest fro-yo store, where the trendy Vietnamese natural wine bar serves sorbet, and where colleagues talk about the latest Caffè Panna drop as much as Brits talk about the weather. It’s a familiar buzz cycle to me, having spent a brief stint in food PR, including (fittingly) for an ice cream shop. In a world of chocolate, vanilla and strawberry, New Yorkers seem obsessed with the new, the exclusive, the different. For many Manhattanites, ice cream isn’t just dessert. It’s currency, posted, discussed and debated like a restaurant opening.

I’ve only grazed the surface of London’s ice cream scene (I see you, soy sauce ice cream), but I was recently invited to try the summer collab between Northern Chinese dumpling restaurant Xi Home and their Spitalfields neighbour Darlish. Their “bao-wiches” feature four ice cream flavours: orange blossom and pistachio; black tahini; rice; and mango, sticky rice and sake kasu, all sandwiched between a hot “bao bun” (more on this in a moment). Two stood out immediately: the black tahini was deeply earthy, with a satisfying density that gave it some bite (and made me temporarily forget about my sesame allergy, ha!). The orange blossom was bright and floral, with small chunks of orange peel mixed throughout.

Xi Home x Darlish’s black tahini bao-wich

Upon being presented with the sandwich, I realised the buns were, in fact, mantou, which, unlike a bao, are unfilled. Mantou are soft, white steamed buns and a pillar of the Northern Chinese diet. In a region where wheat is grown in abundance, mantou plays the role rice does further south. Growing up in the eastern part of the country, I ate mantou at restaurants where they were served in gold and silver pairs (deep-fried and steamed) and always with a side of condensed milk. Calling this a “bao” is, I suspect, a knowing mischaracterisation. Filling the mantou after steaming doesn’t make it a bao but something else entirely: a humble bun repurposed to hold something other – something sweet, something surprising.

Gold and silver mantous with condensed milk

Within a stone’s throw of my flat, I am at liberty to choose between an Amorino, an Oddono’s, a local Italian gelateria, or the neighbourhood icon, Foubert’s. And somehow, on any mild summer evening, all four have a queue: grandparents, kids still in school uniforms, and adults who clearly decided mid-walk that tonight calls for a cone. It might be the only place left where my crippling indecision is not just tolerated but actively indulged (all hail the tasting spoon) and where whatever’s left of my fragile self-image goes out the window entirely (because really, how graceful can one be in a race against the melt?). Somewhere between the queue and the desperate search for more napkins, there’s a strange kind of stillness: two blissful minutes where salted caramel or pistachio is the only crisis worth having.

We’re in August now, which means we’re all cramming in as much ice cream as our blood sugar levels will allow before summer’s over. Everyone, it seems, has picked their poison: my flatmates keep our freezer permanently stocked with Magnums, my best friend has kept up her school-girl habit of having a Cornetto a day (to keep the doctor away), and I was recently told, with conviction, that the holy trinity of British ice lollies I must ingratiate myself with is Fab, Twister and Feast, a claim that will no doubt enrage some Solero and Calippo loyalists.

I’ll let you in on a little confession. For the longest time, when asked what my favourite ice cream flavour was, I’d say raspberry sorbet (which, I know, doesn’t even count). I liked how it made me sound: confident, audacious, effortlessly cool. The kind of answer I’d give if I were trying to seem like someone who orders black tahini on a Tuesday. The truth is far less interesting. I’ve always been a chocolate girl. I used to end every grocery store trip in the summer with a walk down the ice cream aisle and flirt with a pint (or two) of Talenti’s chocolate gelato, rich with dark chocolate mix-ins (it’s since been discontinued, RIP). When impulse triumphed over reason, I’d take it home and shamelessly eat it straight from the tub. Order in company and you’re tempted to put on a performance, but alone with a pint…

So there it is, my cover’s blown. I’ve since abandoned my raspberry sorbet lies in an ill-advised attempt to live more earnestly (in chocolatey indulgence). Now it’s your turn. What are you reaching for? I’d love to know.

Here’s what else is saved in my Good Food app right now:

Sticky toffee pudding is my favourite British dessert, hands down, no competition. Combine that same decadent toffee sauce with the spiciness of ginger and the tingle of Sichuan peppercorns? Say no more.

In honour of Darlish, it felt only right to include a baklava-themed dessert on this list.

Growing up, every birthday was an excuse for an ice cream cake. I’d always go with cookies and cream, but my brother has never grown out of strawberry. For his 22nd birthday, I ordered one from the Cold Stone near his university and had them print a childhood photo of him on it. Best present I’ve given him to this day.

There are certain flavours that make me miss New York. PB&J is one of them.

I used to hate coconut. Then something clicked, and now I’m coconut-obsessed. It’s in my granola, in my latte, and if it’s on the menu at an ice cream parlour, you can bet I’m ordering it. If you’ve got a machine at home, give it a go yourself.

For something more seasonal, I’d give this blackcurrant no-churn recipe a go. Blackcurrants won’t be around for much longer, so I’d run, not walk, to the shop.

I don’t know if anyone else is as mochi-obsessed as I am, but I grew up in Asia, so I’m a fan of all things chewy and made from glutinous rice flour. You could buy a box of Little Moons and call it a day. Or you could give this recipe by Yuki Gomi a try.