Häagen-Dazs - Butter Pecan

Butter Pecan - Vanilla Ice Cream with Roasted Butter Pecans

Today, we go right back to Häagen-Dazs for their Butter Pecan flavor.  Interesting story:  I actually bought this pint by mistake.  When I was at the non-chain convenience store buying the Pralines & Cream pint that I couldn't find anywhere else.  I put my initial pint back and reached down into the bottom of the case for a colder one and grabbed a Butter Pecan by mistake.  You'll see that both similar packaging with pictures of pecans on the front.  I tried to make an exchange the next day after I had discovered my mistake but they would not do it.  So, I had to eat both!  Tough, eh?  A silver lining (if one is even needed) is that I probably would have gotten to this flavor eventually.   Butter pecan is a fairly ubiquitous flavor which is present in almost any scoop shop with a double-digit number of flavors.  In fact, Wikipedia states that butter pecan is the country's third most popular flavor of ice cream behind vanilla and chocolate (according the American College of Emergency Physicians of all places).

Removing the lid and the plastic seal, the top of the pint is an off-white with plenty of mix-ins visible right away.  Digging in,the base is billed as being vanilla here and vanilla extract is in the ingredient list but you can tell that some of the butter from the mix-ins has blended into the base.  It served as good vehicle for delivering the pecan mix-ins.  There were a lot of pecans in this pint!  It was quite common to get several pieces into a single spoonful.   The pecans were softer and less crunchy than the praline pecans of the pralines and cream.  I got the labels of the two flavors confused before but I was defintely not confused once they were opened up.  Pralines & Cream is a sweeter pint which lots of crunchier pecans and lots of caramel.  This is a richer buttery pint with softer and more numerous pecans.

This is a standard flavor which was very well done by Häagen-Dazs.  They usually do the classic flavors well and this is no exception.