Don’t fancy Christmas pudding for your festive dessert this year? We’ve got an alternative suggestion – pigs in blankets ice cream.
The bad news is that you’ll have to leave in or near Hertfordshire to try it. Fabio’s Gelato, an ice cream shop in Hitchin run by Fabio Vincenti, 34, and his wife Hannah, 33, is selling the flavour for the rest of the holiday period.
The recipe incorporates the flavours of sausage, bacon, vanilla ice cream and maple syrup, and was inspired by the success of the parlour’s Brussels sprouts recipe sold in 2017.
According to the creators it tastes like breakfast – “It’s like when you get bacon and maple syrup on pancakes but it’s just colder,” said Vincenti. “You get sweet from the ice cream, a smokey taste from the bacon and then the sweet again from the syrup taste.”
One scoop costs £2.70, but guests have a chance to taste the flavour before they buy.
The parlour has a reputation for unique flavours. Christmas editions include mince pies, Ferrero Rocher, gingerbread and chocolate orange. Other popular choices are McDonald’s Big Mac meal, chocolate and Marmite, Guinness, blue cheese, parma violent, butter beer and slime.
“People are so intrigued by the mince pie one, even people who don’t like mince pies like the flavour because it isn’t dry,” the creator said.
Vincenti added: “We like to cause a reaction and we do try and make the flavours taste nice. It pushes your brain into another area where you think it’s not going to taste very nice, but it surprises you.”
The couple fell in love with ice cream after a family holiday to Rome, and decided to pursue their love for the dessert by attending a course at Reading University in 2013.