Have you frozen half a watermelon this week? If not, you may have missed one of the summer’s most viral, refreshing and photogenic food trends.
In recent weeks, TikTok and Instagram have filled with videos of people freezing halved fruit and turning it into a kind of homemade ice cream. It started with watermelon, moved on to melon and has since reached fruits such as pineapple.
Two-ingredient ice cream
(Video and editing: Sapir Gordo)
The method is simple: cut the fruit in half, scoop out a hollow in the center and freeze it for several hours. Once completely frozen, pour sweet cream, milk or condensed milk into the cavity, then use a spoon to scrape the frozen fruit directly into the liquid.
As the frozen fruit shavings mix with the cream, they create a texture somewhere between sorbet and soft ice cream, creamy, airy and quick to melt. Another advantage: there is no need for a food processor, an ice cream machine or even a bowl.
As always, social media has already produced variations. Condensed milk makes the dessert sweeter, coconut milk offers a vegan version, while Greek yogurt or high-protein dairy products can make it a lighter option.
Add cream
(Photo: Sapir Gordo)
Then scrape
(Photo: Sapir Gordo)
Kitchen test: Does it actually work?
After watching enough videos, we decided to try the trend ourselves.
Preparation: This is where the trouble starts. Frozen fruit is extremely hard to scrape, and the process quickly becomes awkward, tiring and surprisingly time-consuming. It takes quite a while to produce a relatively small amount of dessert. For us, the effort simply did not justify the result.
Texture: The final mixture is creamy and airy, somewhere between sorbet and soft-serve ice cream. It works, but it is not a texture that cannot be achieved much more easily.
Taste: The combination of sweet, refreshing fruit and cream is pleasant enough, but it is hardly a revelation. It tastes fine, just not good enough to justify all the work.
Bottom line: The trend is undeniably photogenic and looks great on camera, but after trying it ourselves, we were not convinced. Next time, we would simply blend the fruit with cream and get a very similar dessert with far less time, effort and mess.