They might look like the real puppy, but these treats are not. They are ice cream just made to look like a puppy.

These puppy ice creams are on the menu at a restaurant in Taiwan and every day happy customers take pictures and tuck into them, but feeling sorry and happy at the same time

The Shar-Pei puppies look almost too real to eat but are made from chocolate, milk tea or peanut-flavoured ice cream.

“The production method (of the puppy ice-cream) is quite different from the ice-cream we made before. We tweaked the recipe so that we could achieve the effect of the hair-like frost on top of the puppy”, said Cathy Chung, restaurant owner and ice-cream maker.

J.C. Co Art Kitchen in the southern city Kaohsiung has been serving these treats since last month, with a special recipe that creates a hairy-looking frost on top of the ice cream.

The ice cream is frozen at minus 30 degrees Celsius so it will keep shape long enough for staff to colour the puppies’ eyes with chocolate sauce before the wrinkled features of the dog start melting.

“I feel sorry for him because he has been made to look very lifelike. It is as if a real dog is lying here. And I feel like cutting into him will hurt him, I feel a bit sorry”, said 24-year old customer, Mia Hsu.

One puppy ice cream takes about five hours to make and customers can devour the small ones for about $ 3.50 and the larger ones for almost $ 6.

Thanks to social media, the restaurant is struggling to keep up with demand as they can only make a 100 per day.