Middle East — Kulfi

Traditional Flavors: Mango, saffron, cardamom, cinnamon

Made from boiled, reduced milk and sugar, the mixture is flavored with a variety of items ranging from fruits or spices. Almonds or dried fruit is optionally added before the mixture is frozen in different shaped moulds.

Turkey — Dondurma

Traditional flavors: “salep” (orchid)

Made with milk, sugar, mastic resin, and flavoring, dondurma may seem like a regular ice cream but tackling this type of ice cream may require a knife

and fork. The secret behind the different texture is the resin since it is a major ingredient in chewing gum.

Italy — Gelato

Traditional Flavors: Chocolate, fragola (strawberry), lemon, hazelnut.

Served at a gelateria, this Italian dessert is primarily made from whole milk, water, sweeteners, and eggs. Usually fruit, chocolate, candy or other sweet confections are added for flavor. Gelato has more intense flavors than ice cream because it contains less air. Plus, this Italian dessert is a healthy choice because it only contains an average of eight percent fat –depending on the ingredients used.

Spumoni/Spumone

This two-layered dessert from Naples, has fruit or nuts between each layer of ice cream. The modern

three-flavored Neapolitan, which means “from Naples,” was derived from nspumoni.

Philippines — Halo-halo (mix-mix)

Traditional flavors (ice cream topping): Mango, coconut, yam.

Simply served in a tall glass, this Filipino dessert contains many colorful ingredients like red beans, haved ice, coconut, jackfruit, crème flan, buko (coconut) milk, ango, saba bananas, roasted rice, ube (yam) and a topping of ice cream.

Japan — Mochi ice cream

Traditional flavors: Red bean, green tea, strawberry, mango, vanilla, chocolate. Tiny portions of ice cream wrapped in a mochi, or sticky rice, covering. The covering is made after pounding streamed rice in a mortar or machine.

United States — Eskimo Pie

Traditional flavors: Vanilla ice cream and chocolate coating

Surprisingly enough, Eskimos didn’t conjure up this dessert but rather Iowan Chris Nelson in 1920. He developed the cold treat after seeing a customer struggle to decide between an ice cream bar and a chocolate bar.

United Kingdom — Soft serve ice cream

Traditional flavors: Vanilla, chocolate.

The process to create soft serve ice cream was developed by a team of scientists who found a way to add more air into ice cream to get a lighter flavor and to create an ice cream that could be dispensed directly from the freezer. The new method used fewer ingredients.

Mexico/United States — Fried ice cream

Tradition flavors: any kind of ice cream. A scoop of extremely frozen ice cream, which is coated with crumbs before deep frying. Some Asian restaurants have adopted this method by using a tempura mixture instead of crumbs.