

“Sea-salt ice cream. I already told you before." - Axel to Roxas, Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days
Inspiration
In August of 2024, we created a recipe for Kingdom Hearts’ sea salt ice cream, but as an alcoholic/non-alcoholic snow cone. I recently finished a marathon of playthroughs including Kingdom Hearts, Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories, and Kingdom Hearts II. Since then, I’ve learned a number of new techniques for mixing cocktails and have a better understanding of what the characters in the series know of this salty and sweet treat. Now, do I know it like I would if I played through Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days? Probably not. But when I get there, I’ll be sipping on this new and improved salty, sweet, and blue dessert mocktail as if I were right there in Twilight Town. It’s salty… no… sweet, and do I taste a bit of vanilla in there?
Workshopping
The majority of the details for this mocktail can be found in the blog post for the alcoholic version. I go into detail about how these recipes differ from the Sea Salt Ice Cream Snow Cone recipe, and how it more closely resembles the flavor of the icy pastry in real life at Tokyo DisneySea from what I’ve read online.
Typically when I start with mocktails I will swap out all of the alcohol with water, or some form of water (like tea, coffee, or flavored syrups). In place of making vanilla syrup, I tried adding dashes of vanilla extract typically used in cooking. Three dashes were way too much, two dashes were okay, and a single dash was really all that was needed for a single serving. If you are strictly no-alcohol, be careful what vanilla extract that you use! Most of them use alcohol as their base, so you’ll have to find a package that specifically states “no alcohol”. If it’s a hassle, then dial back some of the water and add in some vanilla syrup. Pre-bought stuff is fine, but you can make syrup of your own, by combining equal parts water and sugar by weight and adding a vanilla bean. Score your vanilla bean length-wise and scoop out some of the beans on the inside. Make your base syrup and set on a low simmer then add the scored vanilla pod and mini-beans. When it darkens in color, remove it from heat and I leave it up to you whether you strain it completely or not.
Since there’s extra water in the mocktail I boosted how much saline solution was present in the liquid recipe. This helped to make at least the liquid component salty enough for my palette and anything extra could be added by the drinker with the sea salt half-rim.
Flavor Analysis
Sweet and mildly salty with a silky mouthfeel. Tastes prominently of a baked vanilla cream.
Sea Salt Ice Cream (Mocktail)
Sea Salt Ice Cream (Mocktail)
- 2 oz (60 ml) Water
- 1 oz (30 ml) Simple Syrup
- 1 oz (30 ml) Sweetened Condensed Milk Syrup
- 1 Dash of Vanilla Extract
- 1 tsp (5 ml) 20% Saline Solution
- 2 drops Blue Food Dye
Method: Shake & Strain
Garnish: Sea Salt Rim
More drinks inspired by: Kingdom Hearts
Guided Recipe in 60 Seconds: YouTube
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