The Luxury Ice Cream You Need To Try At Least Once In Your Lifetime

Admittedly, taking a break from the daily grind to indulge in a bite of creamy vanilla or sweet, chocolate-y ice cream can feel like a small luxury. Then there are those ice creams that take luxury to a whole new level. Take, for example, the Frrrozen Haute Chocolate ice cream sundae at Serendipity 3 in New York City, which boasts edible 23-karat gold as one of its ingredients and holds the Guinness World Record for being the most expensive dessert with a jaw-dropping price tag of $25,000.

But, eating luxury ice cream doesn't have to mean dropping a lot of dough. One taffy-textured option is reasonably priced, unless, of course, you count the cost of a plane ticket. According to Atlas Obscura, Turkey serves up a "stretchy" ice cream that requires an interesting process and some unique ingredients to make. And for some lucky customers, ordering this cold treat can even mean becoming the subject of a little entertainment for onlookers.

Whether your go-to ice cream order is soft serve in a wafer cone or regular in a cup, you may be caught off guard by the texture of Turkey's dondurma ice cream the first time you encounter it. As Gulf Times explains, with a thicker, more pliable texture, dondurma doesn't melt as quickly as other ice cream varieties, and it can even be eaten using a knife and fork. Dondurma, which is Turkish for "freezing," owes its texture to ingredients such as "powdered orchid bulbs, known as salep" and "a pine resin called mastic sap," as well as the process the dessert goes through involving being beaten by metal rods, according to Atlas Obscura.

In Turkey, some playful street vendors have a whole lineup of tricks to spring on unsuspecting newbies and returning dondurma fans who are purchasing the elastic treat. In videos like this one on YouTube, vendors tease customers by pretending to fill cones held by eager hands, only to pull the ice cream away before the customer takes that coveted first bite. When it comes to flavor, Atlas Obscura notes that the mastic sap can give dondurma an "evergreen taste," but chocolate and fruit flavors are also available. For anyone who likes to double-down on sweets, Yummy Istanbul revealed it's not uncommon to see dondurma paired with other sweets like baklava. (For everyone else, it might be a good time to rethink your lives.)