The Ice Cream That’s Black As Charcoal

Last month, Little Damage, a soft serve joint that opened in Los Angeles in February, unveiled a flavor it’s dubbed Almond Charcoal. It’s made with almonds and activated charcoal, giving it a tar-black appearance and a slightly metallic-looking finish. Following this flavor's rather meteoric success, Little Damage swapped it out for another, equally arresting vanilla and charcoal variety, Black Roses, last week.

Black ice cream isn’t anything new, of course. Japan is home to black sesame ice cream and squid ink soft serve. And last summer, both Morgenstern’s over in Manhattan and Prohibition Creamery in Austin debuted black coconut ash ice cream, which has a similarly morbid aesthetic.

But pitch-black ice cream is enjoying a resurgence thanks to Little Damage, and I’m personally pretty jazzed about it. There's no way around it—those photos are gorgeous. Perhaps my affinity to these photos is colored by Starbucks' Unicorn Frappucino and similar color wheel disasters that have captured the popular imagination. Black soft serve is a welcome foil to the Unicorn Frappucino. Of the recent trends that have seized Instagram feeds, it's basically the only one I’m willing to fully endorse.

Ever have black ice cream? Let us know in the comments.