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Missouri cicada ice cream seller advised to cool it

An extreme closeup of a cicada. Sparky's Homemade Ice Cream in Columbia, Mo. featured the insects in a flavor of ice cream last week, but have since been told to halt production.
(via Flickr/Common Pixels)
An extreme closeup of a cicada. Sparky's Homemade Ice Cream in Columbia, Mo. featured the insects in a flavor of ice cream last week, but have since been told to halt production.

Updated 9:59 a.m. June 8 to clarify Associated Press story.

Public health officials in Columbia, Mo. have asked an ice cream shop to cool it* with the cicada-flavored ice cream that customers apparently can't get enough of.

Sparky's Homemade Ice Cream sold out its only batch of the insect-filled snack within hours of its June 1 debut. Employees collected the bountiful bugs in their backyards and removed most of the dead cicadas' wings

The cicadas were fully cooked by boiling then covered in brown sugar and milk chocolate. The base ice cream is a brown sugar and butter flavor.

*Note: The original story from which the Associated Press gathered  their version was from the Columbia Missourian. A clarification about the details of the story has been posted to the comment section of the original story by the Missourian's Outreach Editor Joy Mayer:

Sparky's called the health department on their own and were advised to not make any more. They were not, however TOLD not to make more. No food code regulations address the use of cicadas. — Joy Mayer, Columbia Missourian