The influencer, who is also designer Cynthia Rowley's daughter, sparked a conversation online when she topped vanilla ice cream with sardines preserved in lemon
Credit: Kit Keenan/TikTok
NEED TO KNOW
- Influencer Kit Keenan recently went viral for sharing a dessert combining vanilla ice cream and air-fried sardines
- She told PEOPLE that she came up with the dish through experimentation and revealed whether it will stick around on her daily menu
- Keenan shared other unique recipes that she’s crafted, from a sweet-and-salty take on a traditional Italian dish to her Caesar dressing chicken wings
Kit Keenan knows how to get the Internet talking.
The New York-based lifestyle influencer, who is the daughter of fashion designer Cynthia Rowley, recently went viral for sharing a unique dessert combination featuring vanilla ice cream and sardines. She told PEOPLE all about how she came up with this controversial confection.
In her viral TikTok, Keenan, who initially rose to fame as a contestant on The Bachelor, shared her “dessert for glowing skin.”
“This is what I eat for dessert every night,” she says in the video, holding up a spoonful of vanilla ice cream topped with sardines. She takes a bite and proclaims it, “so salty and delicious.”
The influencer then shows how she makes the dessert, scooping vanilla Van Leeuwen ice cream into a bowl before opening a can of Fishwife Sardines with Hot Pepper.
“Mash them up with a fork,” she instructs, before placing the fish on parchment paper. “Air fry until they're nice and crispy.”
She holds up the finished product, still sizzling from the air fryer. She adds the sardines to the top of her ice cream.
The recipe provoked an online debate among Keenan's circle and the broader community.
@kitkeenan
would you try it
♬ Romantique (from “En Cas De Malheur”, 1958) – René Cloërec
“Here I thought that was a mashed up cookie,” Keenan's friend and fellow influencer Danielle Pheloung commented. Pheloung's twin Brigette, who goes by Acquired Style online, wrote simply, “WHAT.”
Isabelle Graff, another content creator, said, “kit im rly open minded but idk.”
“hi worried,” TikToker Julia Mervis wrote, while influencer Sally Carden commented, “Hi is this real.”
Others were more open to the combination.
“Why am I kinda on board with this and now wanting to try,” one commenter wrote.
“Ugh. Been trying to figure out a way to eat sardines this might have to be it lol,” another said.
Keenan told PEOPLE that the dessert offers a milder flavor than she thinks many commenters would anticipate, due to the less potent fish flavor of sardines.
“It depends on what they're canned in. So those were preserved in lemon, so they had a little bit of a lemon flavor, which actually went really well with the vanilla ice cream,” she said of the sardines in the video. “They're not as flavorful as or overpowering as I think most people think they are.”
“Most people have a misconception that sardines are really salty because they associate them with anchovies, but they're not actually that salty,” she said. “I would compare them more to tuna.”
Credit: Lexie Moreland/WWD via Getty
“They don't have the strongest flavor,” she added. “Especially when they're air fried like that and they're really crispy.”
But is this combination really part of the influencer's daily diet?
“That video was a bit of a joke,” Keenan admitted. “I've obviously seen the tinned fish craze, and I just wanted to experiment and try it in a really interesting and somewhat weird way.”
“I love mixing salty and sweet, so I thought, why not make crunchy air-fried sardines the topper for vanilla ice cream?” she said.
“I made it as a bit of rage bait in a way,” she added. However, “when I ended up trying it, I actually was surprised at how delicious it was.”
She said that she was “pretty prepared” for the Internet to be up in arms about the combination.
“It's not something that I necessarily think that everyone should try, but I think the idea was more to try weird food combinations,” she said, adding “I think that's how some of the best of my recipes have come about.”
She brought up her chicken saltimbocca recipe as an example. The Italian dish usually features thin chicken cutlets topped with prosciutto and sage, and Keenan adds jelly to it.
“It has this beautiful, sweet and savory flavor that is really fun and different,” she said.
She also highlighted her Caesar chicken wings, which she said are featured in her November 2026 cookbook In Good Taste.
“The wings are marinated in the Caesar dressing before they're cooked, and then they're dipped in Caesar dressing, and those are some of my favorite chicken wings,” she said. “Would never think to use Caesar dressing as a marinade, but it works really well and keeps the chicken really tender.”
“I love meshing things that might not normally go together,” she said, highlighting how certain weird food combinations like sour cream martinis can go really viral or even “actually taste really amazing.”
When it comes to the sardines and ice cream, Keenan is unsure that the dessert will become a mainstay in her nightly routine.
“It's not necessarily something that I am going to make a million times or become a household staple,” Keenan said of the fishy dessert. “But I'm always happy to experiment in the kitchen. And I feel like this was just a fun little experiment.”
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