Jeni's - Sweet Potato with Torched Marshmallows

Sweet Potato with Torched Marshmallows - Sweet Potato Ice Cream with Nutmeg, Cinnamon and Torched Marshmallows

The Columbus-based Jeni's brand had a Black Friday sale which I could not pass up.  It was everywhere online, but also a thanks to the readers who reminded me about it in the comments.  It was six pints for the price of four, so it basically ended up being the equivalent of free shipping.  That's great because my local grocery stores do not carry the full Jeni's line.  For this shipment, I focused mainly on the holiday flavors.  One exception would be the Dark Chocolate Peppermint which I reviewed last year and appears to be unchanged.  Read the old review for that one.

A fun message on the inside of the box

For the first pint, I chose Sweet Potato with Torched Marshmallows because I associate sweet potatoes more with Thanksgiving and we're past that already.  This flavor is similar -- but not the same as -- one of their holiday flavors from last year, Sweet Potato Eclair.  Both feature a base of sweet potatoes and cinnamon (this year's also contains nutmeg).  Last year's mix-ins were pastry flakes and white chocolate curls while this years mix-ins are torched marshmallows.  I had never heard of torched marshmallows before but I think it is just the process of laying out miniature marshmallows on a pan and then using a small kitchen blow torch on them.

Let's dig in.  The packaging is cool.  It is a lot more detailed and artistic than their standard orange and yellow cartons.  I wonder if new artwork will propagate to the other flavors.  I hope so.  Opening the lid, the sweet potato base is a yellow in color with a hint of orange and a lone marshmallow is visible on the top.  Digging in, the sweet potato base is quite tasty.  The cinnamon and nutmeg provide quite a bit of flavor, but you can still taste the sweet potatoes.  The marshmallows provide the occasional change in texture but it is not an overly marshmallow pint.

This is a really good pint of ice cream.  It is basically just a tweak of last year's sweet potato flavor but that is OK because the spicy sweet potato base is the star of the pint.  Each year the mix-ins are chosen so as not to distract too much from this base.  I think I like this year's because it is a bit spicier.  If you're craving sweet potatoes this holiday season, check this out.

  

Ample Hills - The Munchies

The Munchies - Pretzel-infused Ice Cream with Clusters of Pretzels, Potato Chips, Ritz Crackers and M&M's

We have reached the final installment of my four-pint shipment from Ample Hills.    The flavor is The Munchies and is one of their most signature flavors.  Ample Hills has a reputation for going a bit over the top with their mix-ins and this is their regular flavor where they pull out all of the stops and toss in as many salty mix-ins as they can.  Other brands have 'lots of mix-ins' type flavors but this pint is one of the few which is not chocolate- or peanut-butter-centric -- in fact it was not for the M&M's, it would not have either.  Thanks to the publication of their cookbook, many of the older Ample Hills flavor's recipes can be found online somewhere and this flavor is no exception.  It is interesting how they infuse the base ice cream with pretzel flavor.  They heat milk with pretzels in it, let it steep for twenty minutes, and strain the milk and proceed.  These details are fun and are making me curious to try this out.

The top of the pint is a doughy color and many small pieces of mix-ins are visible at the top of the pint.  Digging in, the base ice cream does taste like pretzels -- rather cool how that steeping and straining worked out.  As advertised, there are a lot of mix-ins here.  The M&M's provide a bit of color and a small hint of chocolate while the pretzels, crackers and chips provide a bit of crunch and a bit of salt.  The salty mix-ins tended to glob up a bit into larger chunks.  The churning process gave these chunks the consistency of a crunchy cookie dough.  Some of the chunks were large enough that I had to 'cut' them before I could fit them on the spoon.

This was a fun pint.  I liked it, but I did not love it as much as I was expecting to.  I think I may have set my expectations a bit too high based on the fame that this particular flavor has.  Also, sometimes so many different types of mix-ins don't allow me to focus on any particular one.  In that regard, I prefer their Commodore flavor as it allowed me to focus on the potato chips.  Still, if you are a fan of salty mix-ins, especially pretzels, and you are in New York, then you need to try this.

Sweet Science - Pecan Pie

Pecan Pie - Vanilla Cognac Ice Cream with a Pecan Pie Swirl

For the first pint after the Thanksgiving holiday, I decided to go with the Saint Paul-based Sweet Science brand's implementation of Pecan Pie.  It was a seasonal offering at their last tasting event, so it seems appropriate.  This flavor was even special enough that they charge a buck extra.  I figure that means that it must be extra good?  We'll find out.  Pieces of pecan pie are the swirl here.  The base is a vanilla cognac flavor.  This is the first pint I have ever had which includes cognac -- a type of brandy (distilled wine) manufactured near the town of Cognac in France.   This all sounds interesting.  I can't wait to try it out.

Opening the pint, the ice cream is off-white in color with very small mix-ins distributed evenly throughout.  Digging in, I do notice the cognac flavoring right away.  I am not a cognac expert, but it has a sweet, alcohol flavor.  There are variably-sized pieces of pecan distributed throughout the pint -- some are quite small, but I got a few half-pecan-sized pieces to chew on as well.  Pie lovers know that the pecans of pecan pie are suspended in a thick gelatinous filling made from butter, corn syrup and either sugar or brown sugar.  In this pint, it appears that this filling appears to have been fully blended into the base ice cream.  So, not really any 'swirls' but it tasted good all the same.

This pint was well-done.  The full blending of the pie filling made this into a sort of 'brown sugar, cognac pecan' flavor.  That makes it a refreshing twist on the usual 'bourbon whiskey praline pecan' flavor done by almost every other brand (see the 'pecan' label on the right and about half of them include bourbon and a praline coating).  I find it a bit curious that this is the flavor that costs and extra dollar.  Maybe it was the cognac?  Anyhow, it made for a great holiday dessert.

Ample Hills - Ooey Gooey Butter Cake

Ooey Gooey Butter Cake - Vanilla Ice Cream with Gobs of St. Louis Butter Cake Pieces

Today is the third pint of my four-pint shipment from the Brooklyn-based Ample Hills:  Ooey Gooey Butter Cake.  I had forgotten, but I have actually had this flavor before.  In the summer of 2016, I did an ice cream crawl of lower Manhattan scoop shops -- seven shops, twelve scoops and a cone in a single afternoon.  An Ample Hills kiosk in the Gotham Market was the last stop, so scroll to the end if you don't want to re-live the entire day.  It will be good to give the flavor the full-pint treatment and write-up.

Gooey butter cake originated in St. Louis during the 30s or early 40s.  The different origin stories floating around are not all the same but the all agree that it resulted from a baking mistake.  Either too much butter or the pastry butter was used and the cake came out flat and gooey... but surprisingly delicious!  So, a new product with a lot of local copycats was born.  Ample Hills has a cookbook which includes the recipe that they use.  This blog post reproduces that recipe online.  It looks like they may have tweaked the recipe recently.  Both the online recipe and my description from last year mention a cream cheese base while now the base is vanilla.

Cracking open the pint, a couple of the butter cake pieces are visible right away on the top of the vanilla ice cream.  They look a little like blonde brownies and are cut into bite-sized squares.  Digging in the cake pieces are chewy which is good -- sometimes frozen cake gets too icy or hard.  The flavoring is different from that of a blond brownie.  There's a lot of butter flavoring, but I can tell that it is made with yellow cake mix instead of brown sugar.  It is good.  The density of the cake pieces increased quite a bit once I got past the top layer.  This was almost like cake a la mode rather than ice cream with cake mix-ins.   The vanilla base was good, too.  I could taste the vanilla clearly even though there was a lot of cake.  I think the switch to vanilla from a cream cheese base was a good idea because all of the butter cake makes for a filling enough pint already.

This was a fun pint.  Gooey butter cake lovers should try this of course.  I see that Jeni's also has a version of this flavor, it would be fun to compare and contrast the two.

  

Sweet Science - Vanilla Mint Fudge

Vanilla Mint Fudge - Peppermint Vanilla Ice Cream with Fudge Sauce

I am continuing to work through the backlog of pints in my freezer.  Today, we switch back to the Saint Paul-based Sweet Science brand for their Vanilla Mint Fudge flavor.  Long time readers may recall that mint chocolate chip is my favorite ice cream flavor.  Since I have not eaten a repeat pint since I started these reviews, I am always excited when I find a pint from a different brand or perhaps a pint which combines peppermint and chocolate in different ways.  Today's pint is a bit of the latter.  Here, there is a peppermint vanilla base (the first time I have seen that combination) and instead of chocolate chips they have a swirl of fudge sauce.

Let's dig in!  The top of the pint shows a yellowish tinge to the peppermint vanilla base.  Most peppermint bases are either white or artificially-colored green.  The reminded me of McConnell's.  The yellow could be from the egg yolks.  There is quite a bit of the fudge sauce visible on top, especially around the sides.  The base ice cream is quite minty.  I was wondering if it was going to be muted because of the mixture with vanilla but it was not.  I couldn't really taste the vanilla, but that could be my palate which often allows other flavors to trump vanilla.  I liked it.  The star of the pint was the fudge sauce.  It was really good.  A bit more like a the topping of a ice cream shop sundae than the usual chocolate or fudge swirl.  Near the top of the pint, it tended to cling to the sides or the container.  I scraped each spoonful against the side to remedy that.  Starting about halfway down, that issue went away and there was plenty of sauce on the bottom of the pint.

This was an excellent pint of ice cream and certainly satisfied my mint-chocolate fix.  As I mentioned above, the sauce made me feel like I was eating a sundae.  A sauce like this would work well with other flavor combinations, too.

  

Ample Hills - Nonna D's Oatmeal Lace

Nonna D's Oatmeal Lace - Brown Sugar Cinnamon Base with Nonna's Oatmeal Lace Cookies

I try the second pint from my Ample Hills shipment today.  I decided continue with the recent oatmeal cookie theme and go with Nonna D's Oatmeal Lace.   A lace cookie is a low-flour cookie made with melted butter (sometimes the butter and sugar are mixed over heat).  The dough is then pre-flattened on the sheet.  Bubbles often form in the thin cookies while it bakes giving it the appearance not unlike a piece of lace.  Nonna is the Italian word for grandmother, so this is probably recipe from the family of the founders of this creamery.  Ample Hills actually publishes a cookbook which includes instructions for how to make some of their classic flavors and I found another blog which reprinted the recipe for this flavor.  Looks good and I can't wait to dig in.

Removing the lid, you see the beige color of the brown sugar cinnamon base.  One of the cookie pieces is visible on the top as well.  Digging in, the brown sugar flavor is quite intense.  I've had several brown-sugar bases but usually it just adds enough to accent the flavoring -- this really tastes like brown sugar.  There is quite a bit of cinnamon in the mix as well.  The lace cookie pieces were quite good.  They were chewy and I could see and taste whole pieces of oatmeal in there.  Some of the pieces were a bit large which I liked.

This is an amazing pint of oatmeal cookie ice cream.  The flavors were very strong and blended well.  It was very filling too.  I was still full the next morning and had to skip breakfast.  Oatmeal lovers will surely enjoy this but the brown sugar base arguably steals the show.

  

Sweet Science - Oatmeal Cookie

Oatmeal Cookie - Vanilla Cinnamon Ice Cream with Oatmeal Streusel

The Saint Paul-based Sweet Science brand had another tasting event and I ended up buying a few more pints.  That left me in a bit of a predicament because I still have three pints of my recent Ample Hills shipment.  This is a nice problem to have, though.  I have decided to alternate the brands, so today I'll be having the Oatmeal Cookie flavor from Sweet Science.  Oatmeal is a popular ice cream mix-in.  Scanning my archives, I am surprised to see that the oatmeal has the complete focus of the pint -- other flavors I have had mix it with a fruit mix-in (where the oatmeal plays the role of a pie-crust) or a bit of chocolate.  Here, it is just oatmeal mix-ins in a vanilla base and what the side of the pint says is "just a hint of cinnamon".  I am looking forward to this.

Opening the pint, the base vanilla ice cream is noticeably beige in color.  Could it be the cinnamon?  I checked the ingredient list and they use brown sugar instead of regular sugar, too.   In my first spoonful, I could taste the vanilla of course.  The cinnamon was also quite noticeable as well.  It was not "spicy" or anything, but it was more than just a hint.  I approve.  It tasted good.  The oatmeal streusel/cookie pieces were distributed throughout the pint.  They were crumbly and not crunchy and tasted quite good.

This was a very good pint of ice cream.  A very simple flavor combination but one that works very well.  I enjoyed every spoonful, ate the entire pint in short order and wanted more when I was done.  Oatmeal lovers should try this.

  

Ample Hills - Big Ample Circus

Big Ample Circus - Sweet Cream Ice Cream with Popcorn Toffee and Red Sugar Toasted Peanuts

I got another shipment from the Brooklyn-based Ample Hills brand.  Ample Hills is one of my favorite brands and it had been a while.  They introduced this new flavor Big Ample Circus -- which contains popcorn as one of its ingredients -- and I could not resist.   It turns out that this limited flavor is so limited that it is already sold out.  I'll still review it because of the unique ingredient list and I am looking forward to having the other three pints from their standard repertoire which are currently sitting in my freezer.  This pint is circus themed.  Red-sugar burnt peanuts and popcorn toffee.   I didn't know until looking it up that red sugar burnt peanuts was actually a thing.  That makes me more curious about it.  And 'popcorn toffee' sounds a lot like Cracker Jack or one of its variants (Poppycock, Fiddle Faddle, Crunch N Munch, etc).  This should make for a unique pint of ice cream.

Opening the pint, I am amazed by the bright colors.  The popcorn and the peanuts are visible right away.  The red sugar and toffee coatings are in liquid form and have run a bit (but not completely) into the sweet cream.  This tells me that the mix-ins were folded in rather than completely blended.  Digging in, the peanuts were indeed toasted (not just roasted).  The red sugar was syrupy rather than a hard shell.  I tried to make sure that there was a little bit of sweet cream on the spoon as well.  The popcorn toffee was interesting.   The coating tasted decent and was not crunchy.  I did not notice much salt which I guess is expected from a candied popcorn.  The sweet cream just served as a vehicle for all of this, but there was enough of it that I could taste it alone.  It is quite good.  It is quite soft and almost folds into the spoon as I scooped it.

This was a very fun flavor.  The mix-ins were quite interesting.  It is gone already, but it'll be fun to see if they bring this flavor back -- or some modified version of it -- for some fair-type of event in the future.


  

Ben & Jerry's - Marshmallow Moon

Marshmallow Moon - Vanilla Ice Cream with Marshmallow & Graham Cracker Swirls & Fudge Chunks

In addition to the new limited batch flavor for fall,  Ben & Jerry's has announced what they are calling "Secret Stash" flavors.  These flavors are not distributed to grocery stores.  They will only be online and from scoop shop freezer cases.  They say that these recipes cannot be mass produced and distributed for some reason.  I think the intent might be to lure people to their new online store, but if it means new flavors then I am on board.  I went down to my local scoop shop and picked myself up a pint.

They used Jimmy Fallon to launch the new flavor.   This is Jimmy's third flavor.  The first was Late Night Snack (discontinued before my reviews started but bring back those potato chip mix-ins!) and the second flavor, Tonight Dough, was released when Fallon moved to the earlier time slot.  There has been teases of the flavor both online and on TV for the past few weeks and last week they finally announced the release of Marshmallow Moon.  

The new flavor is essentially an implementation of a moon pie ice cream.  MoonPies were first created by the Chattanooga Bakery back in 1917 -- a hundred years of MoonPies!  For some reason, there are not one but two songs about eating these MoonPies while drinking RC Cola.  I am not sure what is up with that.  Since MoonPie's originated in Tennessee, perhaps it is a Southern thing.They consist of a layer of marshmallow between two graham-crackers with a chocolate coating around the whole thing.  It is sort of a pre-packaged version of a s'more but with untoasted marshmallow and with the chocolate on the outside rather than the inside.  That said, the MoonPie appears to pre-date the s'more by a few years so perhaps the s'more is a handmade campfire version of a MoonPie.  It must be a southern thing.  Anyhow, chocolate, marshmallow and graham cracker work well together any way you combine it.  Here, Ben & Jerry's uses vanilla ice cream as a base for all the mix-ins.

The new packaging is beautiful.  Removing its lid shows the vanilla base with quite a lot of marshmallow visible up top.  It almost looks like a frosted ice cream cake.  Some of fudge chunks are also visible.  Some lighter beige colored strips could be evidence of the graham cracker swirl as well.  Digging in, the marshmallow swirl is quite thick and pasty.  It is delicious, but it is also quite sweet.  I see the role that the vanilla base will play here -- balance.  One could easily overload on this much marshmallow.  The fudge chunks were the standard chunks that Ben & Jerry's usually uses.  I like these chunks for being crunchy and chocolatey.  The flavor of the graham cracker swirl is not as obvious.  Sometimes I would notice the gritty texture of the shredded crackers but the flavor did not stick out as much as the marshmallow and chocolate.

This was a good and fun flavor.  It is an extremely sweet flavor, so be prepared for that.  The different here was thick and pasty marshmallow.  In previous flavors, Ben & Jerry's either goes for a gooey marshmallow (Phish Food, One Sweet World) or the marshmallow ends up being well-blended into the vanilla base as with a couple of previous limited batch flavors (Baked Alaska, Save Our Swirled).  Here it stays thick and distinct from the base which makes for a very sweet pint.  Give it a shot, if you'd like a sweeter version of a s'mores-type of flavor.

I really like the idea of having Secret Stash flavors.  I wonder how often they will come out.

 

Ben & Jerry's - One Sweet World

One Sweet World - Coffee Caramel Ice Cream with Fudge Chunks & Swirls of Marshmallow & Salted Caramel

Today we return to the Ben & Jerry's for their new limited batch flavor One Sweet World.  A survey of Ben & Jerry's flavors is how these reviews got started, so it is fun to return to to the brand that started it all.  This new flavor is actually a reimagining of a flavor from ten years ago called "Dave Mathews Band One Sweet Whirled" which has recently been placed on Ben & Jerry's list of most missed flavors.   They ingredients are mostly the same -- only a few slight tweaks.  Instead of coffee and caramel bases there is now a single coffee-caramel base and there is no coffee in the fudge chunks now.  Those changes are pretty minor.

Removing the lid shows the beige color of the coffee caramel base with some of the marshmallow swirls visible as well as a couple of the fudge chunks.  Digging in the coffee caramel base is quite tasty.  Neither the coffee nor the caramel is too strong, but these flavors do seem to go well together.  I've seen this combination before, but I'm surprised that it is not more common.  The marshmallow and caramel swirls are prevalent throughout the pint.  They almost blend with the base create a gooey, half-melted texture for the pint.  The Phish Food flavor has the same swirls which creates the same gooey texture in a much different base.  The fudge chunks give you something to chew on in an otherwise soft pint and provide a lot of chocolate flavor.  These chunks are shaped like ampersands (see extra photo below.  I am not sure what the ampersand is supposed to mean, but they look neat.

This is a good pint of ice cream.  A coffee-caramel version of Phish Food is a good way of describing this flavor.  I am not sure why this flavor got discontinued before, but if the limited batch ends up being successful, perhaps they'll bring it back for good.