Ice cream has taken just about every form imaginable. It’s been blended with fudge, candy, and cookies, flavored with chili spices, and even drizzled with soy sauce. Layered in cakes, torched under meringue, fried, freeze-dried—you name it.
And yet, somehow, there is still always room for innovation in the ice cream world. Earlier this year, a never-before-seen kind of ice cream launched overseas and instantly lit up the internet—mostly because no one could figure out what it actually was. It was a dessert that claimed to take the ice out of ice cream in a “culinary first,” as the company called it.
And what’s even more surprising? The celebrity behind it.
Tyra Banks Launches Hot Ice Cream in the U.S.
Supermodel and TV personality Tyra Banks has officially entered the ice cream world—and not in the way anyone expected. This summer, she opened her first Smize & Dream shop in Sydney, Australia, offering artisanal scoops plus one very intriguing signature item: her so-called “hot ice cream”—aka Hot Mama.
The public reaction wasn’t necessarily love or hate—it was pure confusion. Was it melted ice cream? Extra-thick hot chocolate? A crème anglaise? A warm milkshake?
Tyra insisted it was none of the above, calling it “a delicious contradiction that challenges everything you think you know about ice cream.”
“I dreamed up Hot Mama after craving the comfort of ice cream and warmth on a winter night,” she explained on her website. “What started as a kitchen experiment in my New York apartment became a viral sensation—a brand-new dessert category the world didn’t see coming.”
Of course, that didn’t clarify much. The name alone is an oxymoron—ice cream needs ice for its texture, structure, and basically its entire identity. Without it, can it even be considered ice cream? It’s not surprising some people wrote the whole thing off as satire.
But this week, the internet-breaking Hot Mama officially arrived in the U.S., and we were lucky enough to get a first taste. So what is hot ice cream, really? Now we finally have the scoop.
We Tried Tyra Banks’ Hot Ice Cream
Our senior editor, Courtney Kassel, visited the Smize & Dream NYC pop-up to sample the internet sensation. “It was essentially warm (not hot) extra-thick hot cocoa,” she said. But the NYC-exclusive flavor, called Santa Smize Cookies, stretched beyond the standard hot chocolate, with “notes of salty, nutty flavor reminiscent of a brown butter chocolate chip cookie, all topped with cool chocolate whipped cream on top.”
Allrecipes
“It was thick, rich, and honestly delicious,” Kassel said, adding, “but revolutionary? I’m not so sure about that.”
So maybe it’s not the culinary breakthrough some expected, but it is undeniably tasty, fun, and already winning over ice cream fans worldwide. At the very least, it’s a cozy new way to enjoy a classic treat—and even expand its seasonality. All in all, we’d love it if the concept came to the States permanently, if not just to perplex more people.
But will the hot ice cream hype last for years to come? With Tyra Banks behind it—and a “Smize” legacy that’s still going strong—this quirky trend might actually have some staying power.
Dining and Cooking