Gone are the days of ‘The Softy’; nitrogen based ice-creams are the next trend

By NewsGram Staff Writer

New Delhi: The first ice-cream, the Softy, which came in the late 1960s has now advanced to the next level. Liquid nitrogen-based ice-creams are today's trend.

These next-gen ice-creams might even take over the place of the traditional collection that we enjoy in the form of cones, softies, bricks and so on.

A fairly new concept in India, liquid nitrogen ice creams arrived in the capital with Niice Cream in Hauz Khas Village. Essentially, what it comes down to is creating instant ice cream using a liquid nitrogen base.

With super creamy scoops of ice cream melting in your mouth, and different toppings and flavours decked up in front of your eyes, how can one not indulge in the sinful act such as that of pampering one's taste buds to oodles of chocolate, hazelnut, blueberry cheesecake or the banoffee pie flavour?

Aakriti Gupta, the brainchild behind the Niice Cream chain, shared that the concept is all about creating your own pot of heaven from scratch.

"The concept is to make your own ice cream. You have a chance to choose your base, which can be your normal base or a sugar free base. You pick your flavour, then add-on say a strawberry with choco-chip or whatever you want…get your colour added to it, be it a violet, pink, green , orange or a red and then we create your ice cream, fresh in front of your eyes," Gupta said.

These ice creams are also a big hit among children, she added.

"What attracts the children is that they can create anything they want. It's not just a topping, which we put on the top of your scoop, we actually churn it with your ice cream so that you get the flavour inside as well," she said.

The toppings here involve all delicious flavours that evoke childhood memories. Jelly beans, gems, white and dark chocolate choco chips, biscuit crumbles, toffee sauce… the list goes on.

Explaining the beauty of nitrogen, Gupta informed that the divine scoops are devoid of chemicals and, therefore, very fresh.

"When you make an ice cream with nitrogen, firstly it needs no preservatives and no stabilisers. We don't need to put any chemicals in it and is made of pure milk. Which is why we don't do deliveries and take always because that would also need some preservative," she said.

The moment one tasted the monsoon specialty, which is the banoffee pie flavour, one personally understood exactly what Gupta meant by "it is super creamy."

Slowly, going beyond the texture, the flavour of sin crept in and the banana and caramel worked its magic on the taste buds.

Next came the blueberry cheesecake flavour which tasted exactly what it looks like. If you love blueberry then this should be on your 'to be tasted for sure' list.

When you think of Nutella, the famous sweet hazelnut spread comes to mind and without doubt, their 'Naughty Nutella' flavour, which takes you back to the time when one would dip a spoon into the container and secretly indulge one's self.

The most impressive thing was the small syringe that comes with the ice-cream containing chocolate sauce.

The interiors of Niice Cream, which has been designed like a colourful laboratory, comes to life with the small additions like the syringe and the white smoke that emerges during the making of the ice cream.

Gupta said she believed nitrogen ice creams would take over the market.

"India always gets everything last, and we wanted to reverse this. I believe that nitrogen ice cream is the next generation of ice creams which is slowly going to overtake other kinds of ice creams. This is because it gives you the freedom to do anything with it. There are no fixed flavours, you can create a trillion flavours. Why should we eat anything that comes as a brick? When we have everything customized then why not an ice cream?" she asked.

Currently, there are two outlets of Niice Cream in Delhi. One is located in Hauz Khas village and the other at Kiosk in Pacific Mall, Subhash Nagar. Two more outlets will open in DLF Saket and in DLF Noida respectively.

With inputs from IANS