Jeni's - Brown Butter Almond Brittle

Brown Butter Almond Brittle - Buttercream Ice Cream with Brown Butter Almond Candy Pieces

We return to Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream for her Brown Butter Almond Brittle flavor.   As mentioned in the previous review, Jeni's is the premium ice cream from Columbus, Ohio created by Jeni Britton Bauer.  Today I notice that the packaging of the pints is incredibly simplistic.  It is as if Jeni wants us to think that she hand-packed the pints at the scoop shop and then hand-wrote the flavor name on the side with an orange Sharpie.  The list of ingredients with nutritional information on the back destroys that illusion a bit, but they still look hand-made when you first see a line of them in the freezer case at the store.

Removing the lid shows a fairly white base ice cream with some of the almond brittle pieces visible.  The first spoonful had a strong almond flavor.  I had to check the ingredient list and there is indeed almond flavoring included in the base.  Its quite aromatic and flavorful.  Sometimes too much almond extract can be a bad thing -- creating a taste more like medicine instead of marzipan -- but that didn't happen here.  It was just the right strength to be strong yet still delicious.  As I ate deeper into the pint, I encountered the brittle pieces.  They were about pea-sized and of a nutty texture.  The Jeni's website describes them as 'candy pieces' but I thought they had more of a nut-like consistency to them.  I think I actually prefer that, so no complaints from me.  I did not notice the brown butter flavoring in the pieces.  That might have been too subtle for me.  Though, as I continued eating the pint, I did notice the butter flavoring in the base.  It was similar to the base of a butter pecan flavor -- except of course here it is almonds instead of pecans.

This pint was very well done and I enjoyed it, but it is a relatively simple flavor and someone buying a premium brand like Jeni's may prefer to get something a bit more exotic for their money.  That said, butter and almond is not a combination I've seen before, so there is some novelty here.  If you'd like an almond version of butter pecan, then give this one a try.

Update: Either I missed it before or the website has been updated, but the mix-ins here are based on a Scandinavian dessert called krokan.  I am of three-quarters Scandinavian descent myself (50% Norwegian and 25% Swedish) so that makes this brittle a little more interesting to me than just any old butter-almond brittle.  I feel like I should seek out some krokon now!