What’s better than a bouquet of roses? A bouquet of ice cream roses. Just in time for Valentine’s Day, Cauldron Ice Cream in Santa Ana, California is shaping its homemade scoops into delicious roses, offering a sweet alternative to traditional flowers and a chance to get in on the latest food craze.
Since its 2015 opening, the shop has been whipping up small batches of inventive flavours, including Earl Grey lavender, milk & cereal, and The Cauldron — vanilla cinnamon ice cream with Oreo and Thin Mint cookies — but until recently each came as a standard scoop. 'The rose shaped ice cream was actually a happy accident,' co-founder and Vice President Desiree Le told Lonely Planet. 'While scooping ice cream one day we pressed on the handle too hard and it created an indentation that looked like a petal. So we created another petal, and another, and another until the whole ice cream scoop resembled a rose. Initially we only offered the rose shape with our Rose H2O flavour ice cream, but customers quickly caught on and now they ask for a rose shape for every flavour!'
Cauldron has already made its mark on the country’s ice cream scene — the shop is credited with introducing the the puffle cone, an eggy, bubble-covered waffle inspired by the Hong Kong street snack. Rose-shaped scoops are tucked into classic or red velvet-flavoured puffle cones, then dusted with whimsical toppings like cookie crumbles, fruity pebbles cereal, and house made caramel, among many other options.
Ice cream roses join monster shakes, soft serve piped into fish-shaped pancake cones, and other offbeat treats in the growing list of wildly popular food trends to pop up on your Instagram feed.
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