Probably not what’s happening here, but look up the [Leidenfrost Effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leidenfrost_effect).
It’s another example of very hot / cold interactions. Basically, if you put a liquid on a VERY hot surface, the part of the liquid touching the surface will quickly evaporate, but the gas this creates actually keeps the rest of the liquid from touching the surface! This makes the liquid basically float above the surface, and it’ll take way longer to evaporate than expected.
I do not think this is happening with fried ice cream, because the ice cream is probably not evaporating, and the other explanations make way more sense.
Other people have mentioned the answers (hard frozen ice cream and quick fry) but this brings up a goal I had a long time ago which was to make hot ice cream. Via some interesting hydrocolloids I was able to make an ice cream base that solidified when heated and “melted” as it cooled but it tasted lousy, like ice cream but chewier because it was basically a gel. It may have lended itself better to other flavors than the standard vanilla base I used. Googling it I saw other people that made similar preparations with the same principles but I don’t know if any of those tasted any good
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