F&N has launched a new Potong ice cream flavour, Japanese Sweet Potato. The limited-edition popsicles are sold in a box of six at $7.60 ($1.40 for an individual stick). Ice cream and sweet potato seems like a good pairing for our hot weather, seeing as Japanese sweet potatoes are perennially popular in Singapore (so much so that Don Don Donki once opened a ‘sweet potato factory’ kiosk selling the freshly-baked tubers at Changi Airport).

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  1 of 3Old-school ice cream, mod flavour

  We haven’t had old-school Potong ice cream in years - blame it on the deluge of new ice cream joints flooding the scene. But it still looks the same to us, a block on a stick, albeit longer, slimmer and easier to eat than the fat, squat Potong most folks would remember.
  
  The good thing: It’s not as agonising to bite into a solidly frozen Potong with sensitive teeth now (anybody remembers that feeling?). The ice cream is also creamier, and melts more easily in our mouth. The bad thing: Are we getting less ice cream for our buck these days? Hmm.

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  2 of 3What you get

  The Japanese sweet potato Potong is a very pretty shade of lavender. But there’s a surprise when we bite into the ice cream; we are ambushed by a molten filling of white “sweetened creamer” that merrily oozes out like custard in a liu sha bao and makes us scramble for tissues.

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  3 of 3Taste test

  Once we get over our surprise, we start to appreciate the unique lava filling, which gives the traditional Potong a modern, fun and atas feel. There’s just the issue of the sweetened creamer being too achingly sweet — perhaps acceptable only to people who order 100% sugar level for their bubble tea.
  
  This distracts us from the layer of Japanese sweet potato ice cream, which is actually quite yummy and tasted more like real sweet potato than artificial flavouring. Pity about the too-sweet creamer, though. Although the filling spans only three-quarters of the stick (guess even the manufacturer is self-aware), we are already jelak by the time we finish a stick and do not feel inclined to reach for another one.
  
  Available at all major supermarkets while stocks last.
  
  Photos: Yip Jieying