If you love ice cream, then you’ll want to check out Coco Gelato located in Cathays in Cardiff.
Coco Gelato boasts a whopping 43 different flavours of ice cream for you to choose from depending on your taste buds. You can choose everything from milk, mars, maltesers and bubble gum, and pretty much everything else in-between.
What you do with those flavours is entirely up to you. You can either have it alongside some sweet waffles or crepes, have it turned it into a freak shake or go for a regular sundae.
If you are brave enough (or just really love ice cream), you can also take on Coco Gelato’s “Roman Empire” ice cream challenge. It’s also perfect if you can’t decide what flavour ice cream to go for, because you can choose up to 18 scoops (which can all be individual flavours, if you wish).
People have been calling it a ‘challenge’ based on its incredible size, but there is no prize or free t-shirt for finishing it like other food challenges, but instead you can claim bragging rights, which is still something I guess.
Here’s a breakdown of what’s included:
- 18 scoops of delicious gelato
- Served on top of 4 hot waffles
- Topped with a mixture of fresh fruit
- Chunks of chocolate bars on top
- Layered with chocolate fudge brownies
- Add your choice of syrup and sauces
For the cost of – £38.95 (what we paid)
Although their website does say £32.95… so may be that needs updating.
Taking on the ice cream challenge
It’s at this point, I should say that I didn’t take on the ice cream challenge alone, there were three of us (two thirty somethings and an 8-year-old).
I love ice cream and can probably eat a fair bit, but not enough for 18 scoops of the stuff. Now my daughter says that she could eat ‘loads’ and loves ice cream so much that she could eat it for every meal for the rest of her life. So an obvious choice for part of the ‘challenge team’… right?
I should point out that there is nowhere in the rules that says you can’t complete this with more than 1 person or with your friends or family. So, it’s all fair game…
For our “Roman Empire”, we chose the following 18 scoops…
- Kinder Bueno x 2
- Kitkat
- Nutella
- Crunchie
- Maltesers
- Smarties
- Bubblegum x 2
- Cookie dough
- Caramelised white chocolate
- Oreo
- Mint chocolate
- Milk
- Mars
- Brownie
- Vanilla x 2
We were also asked to choose 4 toppings, so went with:
- Popping candy
- Marshmallow
- Whipped cream
- Brownie pieces
There were two fruits…
- Strawberries
- Raspberries
And to top it all off…. 2 sauces
- Raspberries
- Chocolate fudge
What it was like…
Having watched many hours, if not days of other people take on food challenges on YouTube for research, obviously. However, I’ll tell you now that all of that advice and knowledge went straight out of the window.
It began with smiles and laughter…
I’m not sure if I thought, it’s only ice cream, so how hard can it be? Perhaps it was the fact that the sun was shining, and it was forecast to be 20 or so degrees. I mean, when the weather is nice, you eat ice cream, right?
I think the only bit of advice or tip we picked up on from watching others was to order hot drinks, which did help.
So, first impressions…
It’s a lot bigger than what you think and will see in the pictures. The waffles were stacked high and there were pieces of fudge brownie between each layer.
This was followed by the 18 scoops of ice cream (with one/two on top), along with a ring of whipped cream, more fudge brownie pieces and chunks of chocolate bars everywhere.
We did also ask for our fruit to be in pots on the side, in case anyone was wondering. It usually comes on top…
At this point, we were still confident that we would polish this off. After all, there are three of us and we’ve each picked some amazing flavours… so, let’s do it!
How we got on
As there was no time limit, we thought we’d take our time and eat around the edges, which was probably our downfall right there.
The first of our three man/woman crew to drop out was the 8-year-old after only devouring a small number of scoops of bubble gum and mint chocolate. She also nibbled a couple of waffles… so thanks for that, it made a real dent.
After a few scoops around the edges, I thought I’d better tuck into the waffles, of which I managed to eat 1 and a half of the 4. As I had left them, they had sadly gone cold, which was another mistake.
The most difficult bit and I guess this my rookie mistake was saving the chocolate bar pieces until further in. This meant they had time to harden and were extremely difficult to break up.
Did we finish it?
Well, I wish I could say we did… it would have felt like a hollow victory with a team of three , but I would have taken it nonetheless. We lasted approx. 37 minutes.
Instead, we found ourselves shivering cold and we were defeated with two waffles left, surrounded by a moat of melted ice cream. The flavours at this point were pretty much unrecognisable and all tasted the same.
There were a few other mistakes that we made along the way, but hopefully we will learn and will come back to fight another day… and may be, just maybe, we’ll do it.
The ice cream challenge is only one of a handful of food challenges that can be found in Wales. If you have any recommendations on what we should try next, let us know…
