Greatest way to eat ice cream
I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream, right? The ice cream we will discuss today is not your ordinary store-bought one though. Maraş ice cream is different from all other ice creams with its texture and resistance to melting due to containing salep. Also known as battered ice cream, it is a geographical indication to the city of Kahramanmaraş, Turkey hence the name Maraş ice cream.
Wafer Halva is kind of a street delicacy though you can easily find it in supermarkets. It can be consumed as it is but is always better with ice cream. Breaking it in half and adding the number of scoops of ice cream and squishing it like a sandwich is the way of consuming the ice cream & wafer halva combination.
Story of Maraş Ice Cream
One day, A vendor known as Osman Ağa who sells salep to Ottoman palaces, put his leftover mixture of salep, milk, and sugar in snow, so that it doesn’t go bad. When he returned the next morning, he finds his mixture in a denser and gum-like texture. He likes the taste of it and asks for other people’s opinions as well. After he realizes everyone likes his new finding, he starts selling it and that’s how Maraş ice cream is found. Of course, it is now as easy to make it as it sounds. There are special conditions and ingredients to make this ice cream.
Ice Cream Culture
Our ice cream tradition is known by almost everyone around the world but is still not the most loved practice. Mostly sold by street vendors, getting maraş ice cream from the vendor is the actual challenge. Apart from wafer halva, if you’re going to eat it in a cone you have to earn your ice cream by trying to catch it. The vendor will serve it on a long metal stick which they churn the ice cream. At the tip of that stick your ice cream and a cone will be waiting for you to catch it. Through multiple tricks, you will become a bit annoyed, but you’ll eat one of the best ice creams ever and have a first-hand interaction with Turkish culture.
Finishing this blog off by giving you great news! Some of our boxes come with wafer halva, now I know it won’t be the same eating it with maraş ice cream, but you can still experience what a great combination it is to eat ice cream with wafer halva instead of a plain cone. Get our crunchy wafer halva to have a different experience with your favorite ice cream.
Here are our boxes with wafer halva:
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