Chilli Oil on Vanilla Ice-Cream Goes Viral

TikTok users have come up with a surprising new flavour hack, adding chilli oil to ice-cream and it has created a whole new genre of spicy ice cream.

There is no shortage of flavour hacks and cooking tips going viral on TikTok, but this Chinese twist on the traditional McDonald’s ice-cream sundae has taken the Internet by storm.

Starting in China, the hack involves simply adding some spicy chilli oil to a vanilla ice-cream sundae and that’s all there is to it. But the trend quickly spread beyond China, popping up in Australia, the US and Europe.

So what does it taste like? It has a salty, sweet flavour with a creamy and crunchy texture, so you can see why it's catching on so much. The McDonald's vanilla ice-cream sundae is a particularly mild-flavoured dessert, with a typical soft-serve texture, but the chilli oil really brings it to life and takes the taste buds on a wild ride.

The chilli oil includes crushed chillies that have been soaking in the oil to impart them with spicy hotness, so by sprinkling on lots of these hot flavour bobs on the top of the ice-cream, it really raises the temperature and provides the crunchy texture. The trend proved so popular that the fast-food burger franchise actually released a limited edition chilli ice-cream sundae to capitalise on the popularity.