The Candy Martha Stewart Mixes Into Ice Cream For A Refreshing Dessert

You might remember Martha Stewart from the last three decades of pop culture moments, or more specifically for the occasional celebrity chef baking tip. It certainly seems as though she has a special adaptation for every confectionary occasion, and Stewart sure has more uses than most for one super seasonal confection. One application in particular gives an extra chill to an already frozen treat. In a 2021 TikTok video, Stewart pulverizes a resealable plastic bag of candy canes with a rolling pin, mallet, and a couple of other implements. She sprinkles the resulting dust over a glass dish of ice cream for a pretty presentation with an extra icy flavor profile.

This is not the only time that Stewart has extolled the virtues of adding candy canes to other sweets. She has also told Food & Wine that adding the stripy stuff to custard at home has become a beloved holiday tradition that she shares with her grandchildren. On social media, she's also used the decor/breath mint mashup to garnish cocktails, jazz up hot cocoa, and to decorate cookies.

Martha Stewart's use of crushed candy canes to rim a cocktail glass or to add color and crunch to cookies in a matter of seconds have aesthetic and flavor merits. Their effects are also felt when the candy's cooling properties seem to counteract that cup of hot cocoa. But the mint's impact is most apparent as an ice cream inclusion. Mint chocolate chip lovers (and perhaps even its haters) know that adding the aromatic to ice cream or gelato just makes it taste colder. The science behind why mint makes your mouth feel cold, even though it cannot affect literal temperature, is similar to the five alarm feeling you might get from a hot pepper. In mint's case, your palate reacts to its menthol the same way it would with something that's actually cold. (On the opposite end of the spectrum, capsaicin causes the fiery feeling.)

Add mint and all its tricky menthol to something that's actually cold, like candy canes to ice cream, and it's like serving a martini in a frosty glass or adding ice cubes to a tall glass of lemonade. It just tastes crisper and more refreshing. So Martha's methods aren't merely a little bit of holiday magic; they capture the conjurer known as food chemistry.