Ice cream gets a buttery twist in NYC's latest food experiment

A viral TikTok trend in the Big Apple shows a vanilla ice cream cone dipped in clarified butter and topped with a sprinkle of salt. While it looks and sounds bizarre, New Yorkers surprisingly agree that the taste is luxurious and balanced.

Popularised by Chef Dominique Ansel, it is a swirl of creamy vanilla soft serve made with milk, dipped in a thin "shell" made with Isigny Ste. Mère butter from France and a sprinkle of fleur de sel (a kind of salt), and a mochi surprise at the bottom of the waffle cone, he shared on Instagram. Available only in November at Dominique's bakery, netizens are now trying it out at home.

New Yorkers who tried it said that the crunch of the butter shell and salt make a huge difference, making a weird food combination work. A video shows YouTuber Sam E. Goldberg trying the ice cream. "You get the sweetness from the soft serve and then you bite right into the butter and get that hint of saltiness with the sweet. That hard butter gives you a great crunch. Unique and it might be genius!" he says.

"There’s a light, fluffy delicate flavour of milk and to put a French touch we added a butter shell on top and a little fleur de sel," Dominique says in a video with a food blogger who said that the combination works surprisingly well and doesn’t taste too fatty despite the amount of butter used. After the Dubai chocolate made with chocolate, pistachio and kadayif, the butter-dipped ice cream has emerged as another bizarre food trend of the year starting as an Internet sensation.