McConnell's - Pumpkin Pie

Pumpkin Pie - A seasonally delicious puree of house-roasted pumpkin, molasses, Sri Lankan cinnamon, ginger, cloves, allspice and R.R. Lochhead® vanilla, mated to California Central Coast, grass-fed milk & cream.

It is Thanksgiving Week so I am appropriately reviewing a seasonal Thanksgiving flavor, McConnell's Pumpkin Pie ice cream.  McConnells offers this flavor each year seasonally between mid-October and the end of the calendar year.  This week seemed like the idea week to give it a try.  The flavor is a mixture of pumpkin, molasses the standard pumpkin pie spices (cinnamon, ginger, cloves, allspice) plus vanilla.  I did not know vanilla was in pumpkin pie but it represents a scoop of vanilla that commonly goes with ones slice of pie.

One bonus of pints of McConnells is the witty prose they put on the side of the carton.  This flavor's is especially long and silly and worth checking out.

Opening the pint, I see the solid tan color indicative of pumpkin pie.  My initial reaction while eating the first few spoonfuls is that this is very tasty.  There is no spicy kick like in my aunt's pumpkin bread, but the pumpkin and spices are well balanced as you would find in a good slice of pumpkin pie.  You can really taste the vanilla as well.  This is a homogeneous pint, all of the ingredients are blended into the base -- no extra mix-ins.  Sometimes pie flavors of ice cream incorporate a graham cracker swirl, but not here.  This homogeneity leads to my issue with the pint -- it was hard to finish in one sitting.  At the bottom of the pint, I was thinking to myself that this was a lot of pumpkin.  There was quite a bit of diminishing returns here.

Those first few spoonfuls were quite good though.  I think this is one to enjoy at the scoop shop one scoop at a time instead of by the pint.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Häagen-Dazs Artisan - Spiced Pecan Turtle

Spiced Pecan Turtle - Chocolate Ice Cream with a Caramel Swirl and Chocolate-covered Spiced Pecans

Trying a new brand for the ice cream reviews -- the "Artisan Collection" from Häagen-Dazs.  Much of the regular Häagen-Dazs line is dominated by simple flavors (chocolate, vanilla, etc).  In the "Artisan Collection, they commissioned six different bakers invent their own ice cream flavor.  These six flavors contain eclectic mixtures of ingredients which make for interesting reviews.  Today's flavor is Spiced Pecan Turtle which was developed by Christopher Elbow an Artisanal Chocolate specialist in Kansas City.

The first thing I noticed about the pint is that it is a little smaller.  At some point in their history,  Häagen-Dazs switched to a 14 oz 'pint' as a way of raising their price without the number on the price tag.  This is more than a little devious, but its not uncommon.   Half gallon jugs of orange juice generally contain 59 oz and cereal boxes have been shrinking for years.  The second thing I noticed opening the pint is a plastic wrapper across the top.  This is the first brand I've reviewed which has this.  Easy enough to peel off.    This reveals the chocolate base which is a more lighter shade of brown than I was expecting.  Some specks of chocolate are also visible.

Eating into the pint, the chocolate base is quite good by itself.  Ben & Jerry's has a fairly mild chocolate base (their specialty is the mix-ins) but I could tell that a little more care is put into the base flavor here.  The mix-ins here are the caramel swirl and the chocolate covered spiced pecans.  The caramel swirl is tasty though I suppose there could have been a little bit more of it.  The best part of the pint is the pecans.  There really is a bit of a spicy kick as you bit into one.  I checked the ingredient list on the side of the pint and all I could find was "natural flavor" -- sounds like Mr. Elbow doesn't want to give away his secrets.  It was a ginger, nutmeg or cinnamon type of spice.  It was good.  My first thought was that there could have been more pecans but since there was such a nice kick when you bit into one it might have actually helped that there weren't too many of them.  Plus it allowed for more enjoyment of the chocolate base. 

I did enjoy the pint (or almost pint).  If spiced pecans in chocolate intrigue you, then give this a try.

McConnell's - Chocolate Covered Strawberries

Chocolate Covered Strawberries - The richly complex, insanely smooth creaminess of McC’s Sweet Cream - Central Coast, grass-fed milk and cream, cage-free organic eggs and pure cane sugar - meets its decadent match in Guittard bittersweet, melted chocolate and perfectly ripe, Santa Barbara strawberries.

Another McConnell's Flavor.  I always feel a little weird pasting the flavor description from the McConnell's website because there are so many salesman-like adjectives interspersed within the list of ingredients.  More simply put, this has a sweet cream base with chocolate & strawberries mixed in.  McConnells does always have fun text on the back of the carton though.

Opening the pint, I was surprised to see a light pink color with specks of chocolate scattered across the top.  Some red strawberry specks were also visible.  I guess with a name like Chocolate Covered Stawberries, I expected large chunks of strawberry coated with chocolate.  That is not the case.  Digging into the pint, the red strawberry specks become more numerous providing a lot of strawberry flavor. It's still a sweet cream base as I believe the pinkish color is just diffused strawberry juice from the shredded strawberry pieces.  Shredding the strawberries has a nice bonus.  I've noted in previous reviews that strawberry chunks will freeze in the ice cream and that biting into a frozen strawberry can be a bit unpleasant.  With the smaller shreds of strawberry that is much less of an issue as the strawberries melt very quickly in your mouth.  The chocolate is also half-melted -- melt in your mouth mix-ins is a McConnell's specialty -- so you can eat the entire pint without need of any biting.

This was a tasty pint.  If you like strawberries and you have McConnells in your area then you should give this a try.