Ice Cream 🍨🍦

Last December, Apiary collaborated with Bailey’s to offer ice cream flavours infused with Bailey’s Original Irish cream.

Charcoal Waffle ($6.50). Although I’ve been to Apiary on multiple occasions, this is my first time having their waffles. Surrounding the waffles, is homemade chocolate sauce and maple syrup.

Personally, I prefer my waffles to be more crispy than what’s served here. It was lacking in Apiary’s version. That aside, the waffles were soft and fluffy.

Bailey’s and Brownies (Premium Scoop). A great pairing of flavours theoretically. Bailey’s original Irish cream ice cream with homemade brownies. Love how they are so generous with the little soft, moist brownie bits that was prominently in every scoop.

However, the Irish cream taste was very faint. It’d be great if they were more generous with the amount of Bailey’s in the ice cream.

Bailey’s Cherry Cupcake (Premium Scoop). Bailey’s Red Velvet Cupcake with morello cherries and chocolate cupcakes. The fruity sweetness from the morello cherries were more prominent than the Bailey’s cream unfortunately.

Bailey’s Iced Chocolate ($7). At least I could taste the Bailey’s shot in this iced chocolate. Would’ve done it with coffee if we went earlier in the day.

So with every scoop of ice cream purchased, they are supposed to give you a Bailey’s drizzle cream. Unfortunately, it wasn’t served to me.

The weather has been cooler recently but that doesn’t stop me from having ice cream. 🍨Cause it’s actually shiok to eat ice cream even on a cold, rainy day. Here I am at @gelatolabo for the first time and I’m impressed with the selection of unique botanical-themed gelato flavours.

I had the Sicilian Pistachio and Sakura Smoke Artichoke with Pear Compote ($6 for single scoop/ $10 for double scoop as both are premium flavours).

Sicilian Pistachio. Nutty, smooth and milky. You’ll bite into bits of roasted pistachios which makes the gelato so fragrant. Trust me, this is a pretty solid pistachio gelato. It isn’t too sweet and doesn’t have any artificial flavouring.

Sakura Smoke Artichoke. When the counter staff described the flavour profile to me, I was sold straight away. Whoever thought of creating this flavour is a true genius.

It has a three dimensional flavour profile - floral, smoky & savoury and sweet. When you first taste this flavour, you can taste the nuanced floral flavour from the sakura wood. As you continue and start biting into the smoke artichoke heart, that’s when you’ll taste the smoky, slightly salty flavour. Of course, this will end this on a sweet note with the fruity pear compote. It may not to be everyone’s liking but I like exotic flavours, so I’ll have it again.

Add on $1.40 for a Jumbo Lavender Cone. The cone has a very faint taste of lavender. But unfortunately, it gets soggy and loses its crunchiness pretty fast.

Well, the highlight here is the gelato. Not the cone. I’ll be back to try more flavours.

Can you kill three birds with one stone? Well, you can at One Stone Three Birds. A rather hole in the wall gelateria in Clementi Town Centre that I chanced upon randomly a couple of months back.

All gelato is made in-house and they have a good selection of local inspired flavours. I decided to go for the double scoop ($7) and picked Yinn’s Osmanthus & Chrysanthemum and Kopi-C Gao.

The Yinn’s Osmanthus & Chrysanthemum is their bestseller that’s named after their customer. This is an extremely light and refreshing treat in our tropical weather. I like the hints of osmanthus and chrysanthemum flowers and the generous amount of goji berries (hidden) within the ice cream itself. It was akin to having osmanthus and chrysanthemum jelly in frozen form but with reduced sugar.

And the Kopi-C Gao didn’t disappoint as well. Intense in flavour and smooth in texture, it was indeed very concentrated (gao). This could be due to the good a I was impressed by how it replicated the actual drink.

They were really generous with sampling back when I visited (before COVID-19 brought about a new normal for all of us). You should drop by this place if you’re in Clementi.

Open for takeaway. Check their website for the week’s flavours.

Interested to try some unique botanical themed gelato? Then check out Monarchs & Milkweed Gelato that serves an array of tantalising flavours from brown butter sage to burnt white chocolate to sea salt gula Jawa. 🍨

Opened earlier this year, it’s become a place to go to have a refreshing frozen treat in the already crowded Haji Lane/ Kampung Glam area.

Went with the brown butter sage and soursop mint (premium flavour) flavours on a cone ($10). The brown butter sage had a buttery and slightly sweet overtone from the brown sugar. However, the herbal flavour profile from the sage didn’t stand out as much as I would like it to be.

Soursop mint is really one interesting flavour. It’s hard to find soursop ice cream so I decided to give this a try. I was impressed by this. The sweet and slightly sour taste of the soursop paired really well with the mint leaves. It was certainly a creamy and refreshing treat on that very hot afternoon I visited.

Not forgetting the waffle cone. What makes it distinct was how it’s savoury rather than sweet. Some may say it tastes salty the first time but I feel it’s an acquired taste. Freshly made on the day itself, the cones were crunchy and buttery. I couldn’t fathom what secret herb they added into the cone batter but definitely salt went into it.

I’ve been back since my first visit and hope they’ll survive the critical CB period. Their gelato pints are now available for takeaways, so do support them.

Fancy some waffles and gelato? Try this award-winning gelateria in the heart of Bishan. Denzy Gelato makes all its gelato painstakingly from scratch in-house and it’s reasonably priced for the quality ($3.60 for standard flavour; $4.60 for premium flavour). We had the skinny dark chocolate, whiskey and salted pecan brittle and ruby chocolate.

The highlight here is the gelato although I always love to have them with waffles ($5). The waffles are crispy and fluffy which pairs really well with the gelato (gelato is lighter in taste than regular ice cream). Also, I love how they offer a wide array of unique flavours and that they use quality ingredients to produce them. Certainly a delectable frozen treat that’s perfect for a hot day.

Will return to try the Elderflower Mojito and Persian Prince as they were unavailable during my visit.

A sweet, satisfying frozen treat of Black Forest sundae waffle ($18++) that’s perfect for ending a hearty meal at Populous. Seems like it’s a limited edition item so not sure how long it’ll last.

Emulating its cake equivalent, the sundae is made up twist of velvety dark chocolate and Tahitian vanilla ice cream, dark cherry and kirsch compote, blackcurrant coulis, mocha sauce, rich dark chocolate cake and popping candy. 🍰

This tasted as though I’m eating a real black forest cake with the cherry and kirsch compote and the blackcurrant coulis. I love the fullness of this dessert, the sweet and sour flavours and how’s it laden with chocolate. 🍫

The best way to enjoy this sundae entirely is none other than some freshly baked, crispy waffles (additional $5++). 🧇

It’s a rather rich and filling and I recommend that to share this with someone unless you’re eating this on an empty stomach. You’ve been warned.

Always a treat to have this uji-matcha hojicha twist when Tsujirihei Honten do their regular pop-up. I wished they kept the strong matcha and hojicha flavour. 🍵🍦

Although I prefer stronger and more bitter matcha soft serves, it’s refreshing to have a light and milky matcha soft serve when the weather has been unusually warm at this time of the year. 🍵🍦

The biggest push factor to return here is flavours are always being rotated. Perennial classics will make their return while new flavours are constantly being churned out. I really enjoyed the mango sticky rice soft served on a mochi doughnut ($15+). Perhaps it’s because I’m very partial to this dessert. It is a mango-peanut butter soft serve twist (sounds weird but it’s actually pretty good) with a side serving of sticky rice. On hindsight, it would’ve been even better with the salted egg lava mochi balls.

A contrasting twist of deep blue sea salt and brownish looking Thai milk tea soft serve ($6.80) by Aqua S has landed on our shores from Down Under. Besides the signature sea salt flavour, they frequently rotates their flavours so it’s best to go down as soon as you get wind of their new flavours.