Gelato Messina launches new milk bar pop-up at Spectrum Now 2016

You don't need a time machine to revisit your childhood's sugary highlights - Gelato Messina is powering a flashback to all your confectionery aisle favourites, thanks to its latest Messina Milk Bar pop-up at the Spectrum Now festival. It runs from March 3-13 and, yes, it's a sequel to the milk bar they debuted at last year's festival.

Located inside the festival's Nosh Pit at The Domain, you'll find the gelato stand alongside stalls by Playa Taqueria, Burgers By Josh, Rangers Texas BBQ, Black Star Pastry's latest collaboration with N2 Extreme Gelato and more.

Corner stores have had a strong hold on Gelato Messina's chefs and owners - despite growing up in different parts of Australia, they remember going down to their local milk bar for a much-savoured fix of hot chips, lollies and chocolate. Gelato Messina founder Nick Palumbo would even attach a piece of cardboard to the back wheel of his bike to make it sound like a motorbike as he rode down there on the streets of Adelaide!

In their grown-up interpretation of the classic milk bar, they're offering their own twists on much-loved sweets. They've spent the last month experimenting with these nostalgia-sparking desserts, playing around with gelato moulds and trying to nail the likeness before they dissolve and become sticky pools.

So at Messina Milk Bar, there's the Twixed, with its breakable fingers of caramel, shortcrust crunch and milk chocolate gelato. The Malt-Tease are balls of malt crunch and gelato, covered in crisp milk-choc shells (which took quite a few tests in the Messina kitchen to get right - coating the balls was no easy task, so remember that when you destroy these four at a time). The Rocky Roadie bars are slabs of marshmallow, raspberry puree, peanut gelato, all sealed inside a chunky choc-peanut shell. And the Munchie hides wild honey gelato and honeycomb inside a milk-choc coating.

"The honeycomb for the 'Munchie' is by far one of the most time-consuming additions we make, but it's worth it when you try it combined with the wild honey gelato," says Gelato Messina spokesperson Sian Bishop. "We're tailored the recipe to make sure it still gives you the same sticky crunch when frozen as it does when eaten alone."

And like an old-school milk bar, you can wash these all down with a thickshake. At the pop-up, they're three-scoop affairs - which may be part of a grander conspiracy to ensure you consume even more gelato, but really, who is going to gripe about that? The shakes come in two retro flavours (strawberries & cream, milk chocolate) and a very zeitgeisty one, salted caramel with white choc chip - probably a tribute to the fact that Messina makes seven tonnes of salted caramel gelato a week.

And if you somehow need to up your consumption levels of Gelato Messina even further, ​Hendrick's Gin is staging its 'Abandoned Circus' display at Spectrum Festival this year, and has teamed up with the gelato brand to give out free Hendrick's-inspired sorbet as well.

March 3-13, Spectrum Now Nosh Pit, The Domain, Sydney, gelatomessina.com/au/milkbar