Mac & Cheese Ice Cream Is Now Out But You Can't Have Any. Here's Why

Ice cream makers have proven you can combine practically anything with ice cream and make it work. Ben & Bill's Chocolate Emporium in Maine has a popular ice cream flavor with bits of real lobster (via Taste of Home). OddFellows out of Brooklyn has figured out how to make extra virgin olive oil ice cream work. Another Brooklyn ice creamery, Van Leeuwen, may have broken new ground in the frozen dessert world with its Kraft Macaroni & Cheese ice cream, launched on July 14 — a day France calls Bastille Day and Americans in the processed pasta and cheese business call National Macaroni & Cheese Day (via CNN).

Kraft and Van Leeuwen are an odd pairing, and not just because of its bizarre ice cream flavor (although no more bizarre than the dill pickle ice cream sold at a soda fountain in North Dakota). Van Leeuwen scours the earth for the best possible natural ingredients, whether it's the chocolate from a small family business in France to pistachios grown on Mount Etna (via SinglePlatform). We're not sure Kraft worries too much about which laboratory its sodium triphosphate comes from. (The food additive shows up on Van Leeuwen's ingredient list.) One of Van Leeuwen's slogans is "ingredients you can pronounce," and sodium triphosphate probably passes that test for most people. Even so, many commenters on Van Leeuwen's Instagram announcement of the new flavor said they had to double-check their calendar to make sure it wasn't April Fool's Day.

We're not trying to drum up controversy about Van Leeuwen's Kraft Macaroni & Cheese ice cream where there is none — at least judging from the commercial success of this limited-edition flavor. The pairing was so popular, Van Leeuwen's website crashed as online customers tried for hours to place their orders, according to comments under another Van Leeuwen Instagram post. Some people apparently made the connection because the mac and cheese ice cream sold out. "WHO WOULD'VE THOUGHT #NationalMacAndCheeseDay WOULD BREAK THE INTERNET⁣," Van Leeuwen said, in all caps, on Instagram. One commenter quipped, "Your servers broke. The internet is just fine."

CNN reported that Van Leeuwen will restock its macaroni and cheese ice cream, but we're not so sure. Kraft Macaroni & Cheese posted a chance to win free pints of the ice cream flavor on Twitter, advising people to "hurry up & enter ... before it's gone forever." The contest ended on July 21.

While many of Van Leeuwen's Instagram followers vented their frustration over the hours they wasted online trying to buy some "pints" (14 ounces, actually) of this apparently once-in-a-lifetime flavor, another commenter tried to broaden everyone's horizons. "This isn't anything new," @angeelato commented. "Filipinos been eating this. ... Check out a Filipino grocery if you have access to one!! There's cheese, ube cheese, and corn cheese ice cream, and it's literally the best."