May 24, 2013
While some people think cicadas sound terrible, others think they taste good.
Workers at Columbia’s Sparky’s Homemade Ice Cream decided to make cicada ice cream. They didn’t realize they would sell out their first batch in less than 30 minutes.
Sparky’s owner Scott Southwick said, “We figured it was a good ice cream.
It sounds disgusting and the batch would go slowly. The batch just flew out of here. No pun intended.”
It all started with ice cream maker Augustine Accurso. She went out at night with a flashlight to harvest the buzzing insects for the ice cream.
Ice cream makers boil the bugs, grind them up in a mix, coat them with brown sugar and chocolate, and add them to ice cream flavored with butter and brown sugar.
Sparky’s employee Christian Losciale said cicadas don’t have much flavor, but they do have a crackly crunch.
Losciale said, “You’re not biting into a whole cicada at once. You’re biting into little bits of it. Honestly, I think if someone were to try it and not know what it was, they would just imagine it was a nut.”
Sparky’s employees only made one experimental batch of 13-year periodical cicada ice cream.
That batch is gone, so you’ll have to wait until 2024 to get your next scoop.
