Ample Hills - Harry & Eigel's Marbled and Malted

Harry & Eigel's Marbled and Malted - Chocolate Malted Base with Marbled Cheesecake Pieces and Crushed Malt Balls

We return to the Brooklyn-based Ample Hills brand today.  I am not in New York right now, so how is this happening?  Well, I am the lucky recipient of the Taste of New York 4-pack which features flavors themed on the location of their scoop shops.  I had never gotten ice cream in the mail before.  Was it going to be half melted?  As it turned out, it came packed in dry ice so it was extra frozen -- much more frozen than a grocery store freezer case.  The dry ice packets were still quite substantial when I opened the box.  I probably could have left the box on my front step for a couple of days before it lost effectiveness.  I dutifully transferred the pints to my freezer, though.  When I say that the pints were super-frozen, I mean in a good way.  No frost build up or freezer burn, just as if it was rapidly quenched to 50 below zero.  Because of this, I did have to put the pint in the fridge for 5-10 minutes before eating it.

Today's flavor is called Harry and Eigel's Marbled and Malted.  It was created this year for the new scoop shop in Brooklyn's Dekalb Market.  What is near the Dekalb Market?  Junior's Cheesecake!    Junior's Cheesecake was founded in 1950 by Harry Rosen using a family recipe perfected by Danish-born chef Eigel Peterson.  So, the "Harry and Eigel's" in the ice cream flavor name is a reference to Junior's.  Cheesecake as a mix-in.  That sounds decadent.  I can't wait to dig in.

After letting the pint soften a bit in the fridge, I cracked it open and saw the brown color of the chocolate base with perhaps a piece of cheesecake mix-in visible right away.  As I dug into the pint, it had a good creamy consistency.  I was satisfied that the shipping and softening were successful without any adverse effects.  The chocolate is quite good and had only a hint of malt flavor.  I quickly encountered the cheesecake pieces.  They were decently-sized.  The chunk in the picture below was typical.  I eagerly bit into the first chunk and it was a bit frozen.  I don't know if that had to do with the super-cold shipping or if it was just frozen from being in the ice cream.  I adjusted for the next chunks by warming them up a bit with my tongue.  That worked and the cheesecake was thick, rich and dense as I remember Juniors cheesecake to be.  The crushed malt balls were dispersed through the pint.  These were basically crushed Whoppers.  I enjoyed the chocolate parts when I ran into them and the malt parts were not encountered them.  This was good because I don't mind malt when it is blended in to help numb a flavor but I am not a big fan of malt for malts sake.

This was a very interesting pint of ice cream.  Real cheesecake pieces as a mix-in was quite decadent!   Ben & Jerry's has a cheesecake core flavor, but they used a sort of goop that was "cheesecake-like" (I did like it for what it was, though).  Here, the mix-in was real Junior's Cheesecake!   It was weird, though, as much as I like ice cream with interesting mix-ins, this pint left me wanting a full slice of cheesecake.  If you're in Brooklyn and you're trying a scoop of this at Ample Hills, you might find yourself walking down to Juniors afterwards.  If you do that, make sure you eat a light dinner beforehand.