{"id":11803,"date":"2021-10-13T14:11:38","date_gmt":"2021-10-13T18:11:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=11803"},"modified":"2022-06-20T14:53:44","modified_gmt":"2022-06-20T18:53:44","slug":"10-things-to-know-about-cicada-ice-cream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=11803","title":{"rendered":"10 things you need to know about … cicada ice cream"},"content":{"rendered":"

The cicada invasion of 2021 may have left many residents of Princeton, New Jersey, making mental notes to move before the next 17-year cycle hits in 2038. But for Matt Errico \u201996 and Gabrielle Carbone \u201998, owners of The Bent Spoon, an ice cream shop in the town\u2019s Palmer Square, it provided a chance to create a summertime treat that was not only daring, but delicious enough to sell out within minutes.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Errico and Carbone first considered making a cicada-flavored ice cream when the insects were around in 2004. But The Bent Spoon had just opened a few weeks prior, and they didn\u2019t want to turn off new customers.<\/li>\n
  2. In 2021, just before Brood X returned, they shared an April Fool\u2019s Day Instagram post featuring \u201ccicada crunch\u201d ice cream, where the pair admitted that the idea wasn\u2019t so farfetched. They unveiled their official cicada-infused ice cream on June 4.<\/li>\n
  3. Featuring the cicadas wasn\u2019t done for shock value. Instead, it was created as an homage to the insect and to raise awareness about its sustainability and nutritional benefits.<\/li>\n
  4. The Bent Spoon uses only the best quality ingredients in its ice cream, so the top priority was to collect cicadas from land and trees that were pesticide-free.<\/li>\n
  5. Collecting the critters wasn\u2019t easy. Errico and Carbone used ladders and nets to reach into trees and collect the insects. It took them almost three hours to gather enough.<\/li>\n
  6. Back at the shop, the cicadas were frozen, blanched, and then dried. Next, the wings and legs, which aren\u2019t quite as tasty as the bodies, were removed.<\/li>\n
  7. The cicadas were ground into a powder using a mortar and pestle and then added into tempered chocolate. That mixture was chopped up and added to a vanilla bean ice cream. The resulting recipe? Cicada chocolate chip.<\/li>\n
  8. Cicada chocolate chip was possibly the rarest flavor they\u2019ve ever offered, but The Bent Spoon is known for making unique and surprising flavors, including oyster, lobster, and asparagus ice cream.<\/li>\n
  9. Turns out, customers loved it. The ice cream sold out online in the first hour, and walkup customers the next day consumed the rest in 15 minutes.<\/li>\n
  10. The flavor profile of a cicada? Unsurprisingly, earthy, says Carbone: \u201cIt\u2019s a beautiful combination when added with the chocolate. It was delicious.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The cicada invasion of 2021 may have left many residents of Princeton, New Jersey, making mental notes to move before the next 17-year cycle hits in 2038. But for Matt Errico \u201996 and Gabrielle Carbone \u201998, owners of The Bent Spoon, an ice cream shop in the town\u2019s Palmer Square, it provided a chance to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":327,"featured_media":11804,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tcnj-x10"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/327"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11803"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11905,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11803\/revisions\/11905"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}