Summer's best new ice-creams

Kangaroo Island Honey with Pistachio

Connoisseur Gourmet Ice Cream

You either love pistachio ice-cream or you don't. But if you do, and we do, this one is a winner. The crushed nuts, immaculately toasted, are swirled through the milk chocolate exterior, which has a satisfying crack when bitten. This ice-cream screams quality, and the green-tinted pistachio honey ice-cream is flecked with nuts, greener and softer than their chocolate-laden friends. The result is a fresh, sophisticated ice-cream you could almost serve after a dinner party.

Murray River Salted Caramel with Macadamias

Connoisseur Gourmet Ice Cream

It's good to know your salted caramel was locally sourced, and there's little more Australian in the nut world than macadamias. This ice-cream has lazy beach days, post-swim cool-down written all over it. While the nuts in choc-dipped ice-creams are often indistinguishable, this one shouts macadamia, in texture and lingering flavour. The very slightly salted caramel tastes homemade, rich with butter.

Honeycomb Crunch

Magnum

The best of the new season Magnums, this is like a gastronome's rendition of a Violet Crumble bar, where crunch and flavours have thrillingly moved about. It's the thick milk chocolate coating that has the crunch now, and the tongue-tingling honeycomb is scattered into tiny pieces. Where the original chocolate bar missed out and this triumphs, however, is the creamy centre. A honey caramel ice-cream is rich and packed with flavour, and the contrast of creamy, smooth and crunchy left us crumbling.

Chocolate and Cinnamon, White Chocolate and Hazelnuts

Booza Ice Cream

Booza has upped the ice-cream-on-stick situation, giving this summer stalwart a twist from the Levant. The range of ''Booza pops'' are a remarkable overhaul of what we once knew ice-cream to be, introducing flavours such as Turkish delight and pistachio, dark chocolate, coconut and cinnamon. This unique recipe has been a feature of the Levantine souk markets since the 1800s, and it's still handmade using sahlab, the ground roots of the Orchus Macula orchid and mastic gum. The result is a pleasing chewy texture, with a delightful density. The cinnamon ice-cream is dipped halfway into thick white chocolate and rolled in chopped hazelnuts. It's gluten and egg free.
See booza.com.au for details.

Boysenberry Cream Cheese Ripple

Liana Raine

Technically a ''pop'', this cream cheese-swirled concoction is tart with boysenberry and turns out to be an adult version of most ice-creams found on a stick. There's no chocolate coating but the lingering cream cheese softens the fruity flavour and icy texture. We're calling it an ice-cream, while others in the same range didn't make that cut. The strawberry and cream was close. We're waiting for the seasonal spiced pear and cream, too.
See website for stockist details.

Strawberry White Crumble

Magnum

It's like someone smooshed up a strawberry shortcake and neatly formed it around a stick before dipping it in smooth white chocolate, twice. The pleasing crack of thick white chocolate and crumbled biscuit gives way to that kind of fake strawberry flavoured ice-cream, but it's good. It is balancing between homemade ice-cream, extremely well churned, and some fluorescent lolly you had as a child. But this is a fun, elegant treat on a stick, aromatic with summer fruit and biscuit.

If you could create your own ice-cream flavour, what would it include? If you do make your own ice-cream at home, what's your favourite flavour combination? Log in to comment below.

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