Ice-Cream Weather ☀️

It's a close fight between Matchaya and my longtime fave Tsujiri. The ice-cream had a dense creamy texture and prominent tea flavours. I could even taste the smokiness of houjicha! If you can't decide between matcha and houjicha (I think there's sesame too), you can opt for a mix which was what we did. Service is a little slow though as the shop at Icon Village seems short-handed.

The sesame ice shavings were good - really soft and fine, and packed a punch of flavour. This came with a red bean topping, which is a classic flavour combination. Though you don't get as many toppings as in a bingsoo, at just $5-6 a bowl, the Snow Ice here is an affordable and really good option. They have it in a wide range of flavours (including DURIAN and SOURSOP) as well.

This was everything I love in a dessert!! A warm chewy ball of mochi with a crisp, caramelised exterior juxtaposed against a (huge) swirl of creamy, cookie butter soft serve ice-cream. So good! The texture of the mochi was 😍! I also love the crunchy almonds (and brittle?) which were super fragrant. The portion was a little too big for me though so I'd recommend sharing it with a pal.

Smoothie House outlets have been popping up everywhere!! It's basically the good old Taiwanese snow ice - very finely shaven ice topped with fruit, syrup and other sweet treats. This is quite expensive - $9.90 for a sharing portion meant for 2. The "panna cotta" was lacklustre. It wasn't creamy and tasted quite bland. For its price (which is almost double of what Mei Hong Yuen charges for its mango shaved ice), I also wish there had been more mango and syrup because the ice was rather bland too.

Try all 4 flavours of yoghurt and have ANY 4 toppings and 1 syrup of your choice at only $5 (U.P. $5.90) thanks to...#SG50! Hahahaha this is great. Even with the introduction of Llao LLao, Yoguru and the like, YAMI is still my #1 froyo cause the yoghurt is really smooth and it isn't overly sweetened.

Get an extra mini scoop of ice-cream this jubilee weekend! ☺️

Fine, milk-flavoured ice shavings completely hidden by chunks of juicy mango, dried cranberries, a scoop of vanilla ice-cream and finally topped with a wedge of cheesecake. This came with a side of condensed milk, but we were happy with the original level of sweetness so we left the condensed milk out. The individual components, while tasty on their own, didn't quite gel together. Also, while the shaved ice here definitely beat our ice kachang, I was a bit disappointed because it wasn't melt-in-your-mouth fine. For me, this bingsoo sadly doesn't hit the spot as well as my all-time favourite Taiwanese "snow ice".

I finally tried this soft serve that's been highly raved about! My verdict...Hmm, it is really milky and smooth, but it tastes far too similar to drinking a glass of chilled milk that I don't see a point in having this instead of, well, drinking a glass of milk. The milkiness of it also became a little hard to stomach after a while. The soft serve itself is pretty sweet, so I wouldn't recommend adding honey to it.

A quiet ice-cream parlour serving a comfortable selection of flavours, including an interesting Horlicks and Hello Panda combination. From tasting the Earl Grey and Horlicks + Hello Panda, I find the flavours here to be generally muted, but I like the Pistachio for the generous bits of nuts in the ice-cream though flavour-wise it definitely didn't match up to Alfero's super creamy super intense nuttiness. It is a nice place to chill though. I wouldn't mind coming back to try the other flavours :)

Having the After Eight flavour and our favourite English Earl from the last time. I'm a fan of mint ice-cream so I really liked the After Eight flavour. The chocolate cookies were a bit too bitter for me, but they were nice and chewy. :)

A photo of what awaited us beneath the wrappers.

At last!!! Special mention to the bestest people in school who spontaneously agreed to leave their seats in the library to get food with me. 🎉 Favourite cookie was the English Earl, which had a robust vibrant Earl Grey flavour. The Apple Pie pleasantly surprised us with chunks of apple wedged into the delicately spiced ice-cream. Butterscotch and Bacon was slightly disappointing cause we expected bacon bits but there were none 😭