If you’re a fan of ice cream (who isn’t?), then you may have found yourself wondering this very question from time to time. While eating a scrumptious scoop of cool, creamy, deliciousness, or searching high and low for the perfect flavor to quell your sweet tooth, many have wondered how, and why, this favorite dessert is so irresistible. It may just be the one type of food that you would willingly spend your next paycheck on and could eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner (ice cream for breakfast sounds like an excellent option in our opinion!)

But just what makes ice cream so incredibly good? Why is it that ice cream continues to be super popular across the globe, with more and more flavors, ice cream shops, and ice cream trucks like the one-of-a-kind Besties Ice Cream Truck popping up every day? It all begs the same question—why is it that ice cream is so delectable?

Ice Cream is a Lot More Complex Than it Once Was

You might remember ice cream from when you were a child as being fairly run-of-the-mill. There weren’t a lot of flavors out there other than tried and true chocolate and vanilla ice cream, and even those undoubtedly delicious flavors weren’t always of the best quality.

Today, though, ice cream flavors and recipes have become much more complex and, therefore, much more amazing! Because ice cream as a sweet treat has been around for quite some time now, ice cream creators and manufacturers have spent loads of time and money to perfect their ice cream recipes. This immense amount of effort put into perfecting ice cream as we know it has resulted in recipes that are light, creamy, easy to eat, and much more flavorful than the ice cream of yesteryear.

What Makes Ice Cream So Creamy and Delectable?

One of the big secret ingredients in much of the store-bought ice cream on the market today is something that is found in abundance all around us: air! 

Obviously, this ingredient isn’t particularly noticeable in your typical scoop of ice cream. You aren’t going to notice that you’re consuming air while devouring your favorite flavor atop a crunchy waffle cone, but it’s there, nevertheless, and it’s what keeps ice cream from getting too hard when frozen (like homemade ice cream can sometimes get) and what helps keep it from turning into a puddle of sticky cream if it’s left out for too long.

Ice cream is still always made with cream, sugar, and flavorings—that part of the recipe has never changed—but many of the large factories making ice cream today use a special extra ingredient. Once the ingredients for your favorite ice cream flavor are whipped together in large batches, air is injected into the mixture. This air gives the ice cream mixture a foamy quality so that it is not straight liquid, preventing the ice cream from freezing entirely and becoming solid as a rock. This makes for ultra-creamy, ultra-smooth, and ultra-delicious ice cream!

There’s always something new to learn when it comes to ice cream! This sweet treat is more complex than you might think, and that’s largely due to the incorporation of air into the recipe. So while there is a multitude of reasons that ice cream is so darn delicious, now you have one more reason. Go and get yourself a scoop—we know you’ve been craving it while reading every single word!