Flickr/The Minty

A balanced meal in one bite

Fried chicken and waffle ice cream? Yeah, that just happened.

Actually, it's been happening for a couple months now, as Culver City's Coolhaus has been rolling out its new most popular flavor; a sweet-savory combo that is already gaining something of a cult following -- as much as an ice cream can, I guess.

So how is it? It's rich, buttery and slightly crunchy, with a distinctive tang of salt and maple syrup on the finish. If scientists invented a substance that could slap all the junk food-loving portions of your cerebellum at once, it might be something like this.

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Häagen-Dazs

Does free ice cream mean summer is here? Along with breaking out the flip-flops and khaki shorts, the steadily rising temperatures should make you to mark your calendars for next Tuesday, May 8, when several L.A.-area Häagen-Dazs ice cream stores will be handing out free ice cream cones from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.

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R.E.~/Flickr

Ice-cream cone at Sweet Rose Creamery

If you, like us, often eat your ice cream too fast and subsequently suffer from a crippling headache, it's not so much nature's punishment as it is a simple change in your body's blood flow. According to Discover, a team of scientists have traced the cause of brain freeze to a sudden rush of blood to the brain.

Researchers actually were attempting to study what factors induce headaches in general, including migraines and post-traumatic headaches that occur in soldiers injured during blast-related combat. Brain freeze, unlike other headaches, can be easily induced (cold drinks or foods placed right at the upper palate will do it) and lasts for only a short period of time, making it an ideal candidate for study.

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Suck It Sweets' Facebook page

popsicles at Suck It

Kaileigh Brielle went to film school, dabbled in filmmaking and then, realizing that she needed a more concrete profession, became a licensed optician, working for someone else before opening her own optical shop in Toluca Lake. That should have been enough creative productivity for a lifetime, but an incidental turn of events led to her opening a gourmet popsicle shop, Suck It, in Studio City last fall.

"I was a total foodie," Brielle says, by way of explaining her disappointment at being diagnosed with allergies to both gluten and milk protein. "I love desserts the most, was baking a lot -- and suddenly there were literally no desserts I could eat. No cookies, no frozen yogurt, no cakes."

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Ben & Jerry's

Free Cone Day at Ben & Jerry's

It's a lovely day outside -- perfect weather, in other words, for some ice cream. Fortunately, Ben & Jerry's has you covered: today is their annual Free Cone Day whereby they thank their loyal customers with free ice-cream. From noon to 8 p.m., visit your local Ben & Jerry's scoop shop to have your choice of Cherry Garcia, Half-Baked or whatever other flavor strikes your fancy in a cup or cone, entirely gratis. Of course, free food inevitably means big crowds but, based on our years of participating in Free Cone Day, the lines usually move pretty quickly. And wouldn't you rather be outside anyway?

amazon.com

It happens every year about this time. Those malted milk-chocolate chip ice cream (p. 82) and blood orange sorbet (p. 162) recipes start appearing in the latest ice cream cookbooks. This year, Sweet Cream and Sugar Cones, to be released in two weeks, starts us down that rocky road to what we hope will be ice cream salvation by summer.

It's a publishing category that is anything but frozen, as there seems to be an open casting call for whatever cherry-almond (p.117) and Meyer lemon (p.156) sweet cream versions the latest pastry chef or ice cream parlor owner has envisioned (here, Bi-Rite Creamery in San Francisco; the ice cream book is a follow-up to the grocer's Eat Good Food book published last year). Should you be interested in auditioning your best salted caramel recipe (p. 61) for future hardcover consideration, keep in mind that using locally-sourced ingredients, all the way down to your milk, is a must in ice cream cookbooks today, being "the most Yelp-about business in American," per the press release, probably had something to do with that publishing deal.

But we digress. The real homemade sugar cone question (p. 46) in an over-published category like ice cream is whether this book will be settling into our shelves next to Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams and friends.

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Jeanne Kelley

stout float

I don't know if a stout float is an Irish dessert, but it doesn't really matter, as St. Patrick's Day celebrations aren't really Irish anyway. A beer float can be awesome, and when done right, it's the perfect creamy-sweet refresher after the traditional American-Irish salty dinner of corned beef and cabbage. (Side note: If you boil corned beef until fork-tender, then slather it with a mix of equal parts Dijon mustard and brown sugar and bake it till glazed -- it's actually quite tasty.)

I first encountered a beer float at a McMenamins pub in Oregon in the '90s. I must admit, I was slightly horrified as I watched the fair-skinned, stocky patrons switch from pints of ale to pint glasses filled with scoops of industrial vanilla ice cream -- with a healthy dousing of stout bubbling over the top as last called neared. But I've since learned that by reducing the scale, and by playing up and off the complex flavors of stout, that frat-boy, beer geek, gut-busting nightcap can be transformed into a damned good, sophisticated dessert.

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Boston Ben & Jerry's Twitter page

Ben & Jerry's first batch of its limited edition "Taste the Lin-Sanity" flavor

When Ben & Jerry's decided to pay pint-sized tribute to New York Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin and his spectacular rise in the NBA, they had a few options. Draw inspiration from the flavors of Northern California and his hometown of Palo Alto, perhaps. Or, because the flavor would be sold exclusively at the Ben & Jerry's ice-cream shop near Harvard University, Lin's alma mater, maybe give the school a nod with crimson-tinted velvet cake pieces in vanilla ice-cream.

As it turns out, the company chose vanilla frozen yogurt and lychee honey swirls for its limited edition "Taste of Lin-Sanity" flavor. Because Lin, you know, is Taiwanese-American. Emphasis, apparently, on the left side of that hyphen. At least there aren't any fortune cookies in there. Anymore.

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Gail Silverton and Joel Gutman, co-owners of Gelato Bar, one of our favorite gelaterias in Los Angeles, recently sold their Studio City location on Tujunga Avenue. Thankfully, the shop's name and gelato production will remain the same.

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We're still pinching ourselves to make sure this isn't a dream. Our sister blog City of Ate at the Dallas Observer tells us it isn't. The Bacon Milkshake from Jack in the Box is here!

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