But elaborate frozen desserts are nothing new in Asia: Fluffy shaved ice was first mentioned in Japanese literature about a thousand years ago. Even then, it was a summer treat flavored with different saps and syrups; later, it was scattered with toppings like red azuki beans, ripe fruit and sweet jellies made with agar, the natural gel harvested from algae. These originals are still popular, like the cendol served from roadside stands in Indonesia, fragrant with pandan and palm sugar.

Shaved ice has steadily been transformed by new ingredients and in new places: milk tea in Malaysia, bananas in Hawaii, grated ube (purple yam) in the Philippines (and in Brooklyn, where Ube Kitchen piles sundaes of frozen ube in dragon fruit bowls at two Smorgasburg food markets). It has recently absorbed flavors such as Oreo and Nutella, swelled into towers and mountains, called “monster ice” in Japan, and been topped with the likes of cookie dough and cheesecake.

According to Daniel Gray, a Korean-American food-marketing consultant who lives in Seoul, these complex desserts match up with Asian culinary traditions, where texture can be as or more important than taste. (Bubble tea, with its pleasingly chewy balls of tapioca, is an excellent example.) Toppings like starchy mochi, slippery lychees and gummy bears are not only tasty and eye-catching, but they also provide the necessary riot of special effects.

“You would never be served plain ice cream in a cup here,” he said. “That would be too boring.”

The aesthetics, too, are an obsession: “Cuteness, presentation and appearance are important here,” Mr. Gray said. (Skin care and makeup, as well as desserts, are popular preoccupations for young Koreans of both sexes.) Bistopping, one of the most-Instagrammed ice cream parlors in Seoul, decorates its cones with pastel Froot Loops, rainbow sprinkles and nonpareils, and sticks giant pink cookies shaped like flamingos, mermaid tails and kissing lips into the ice cream. (This artistic vision has also carried over to the United States: At the cutting-edge New York parlor Ice & Vice, the owners, Paul Kim and Ken Lo, produce pastel “flavors” like Blue, Yellow and Green, and just unveiled a vanilla sundae in a hot-pink cone with a vivid drizzle of raspberry jam, lavender and pink sprinkles, and a deep-red Luxardo cherry.)

Ice cream creations like these have become part of Asian food and visual culture. “What I see day and night is kids holding up cones in one hand and phones in the other,” said Roxanne Dowell, an editor at Sassy Hong Kong, an online English-language guide to that notably food-and-trend-obsessed city. “And the girls make sure to get their manicures in the shot.”

Daisann McLane, a former New York Times travel writer who lives in Hong Kong and guides food tours there, said that posting pictures of iconic foods confers status online — and also locates the traveler on the virtual world map.

“If you see an egg waffle in the shot, you know that’s Hong Kong,” she said. Chilled parfaits of custard and perfect fruit place you at famous Tokyo “fruit parlors” like Takano and Sembikiya. On Thailand’s beaches, ice cream rolls are shot against spectacular oceanic sunsets.