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!