Sweet Science - Strawberry Stracciatella

Strawberry Stracciatella - Vanilla Ice Cream with Organic Strawberry Sauce with Dark and Milk Chocolate

Sweet Science of Saint Paul has still more flavors!  I was able to find three new flavors on their order menu, so I ordered another four-pack for curbside pick-up.  (My fourth pint was Berry Crumble which I gave to my uncle).  I am now reading that the Keg & Case scoop shop is re-opening on June 19th.  That should make it easier for me to grab the latest pints.  Today's flavor is called Strawberry Stracciatella.  I have discussed what stracciatella means in previous reviews (here and here).  It is a way of making shred-like chocolate chips.  The base ice cream here is actually vanilla and the strawberry is delivered with a sauce.  Checking my review archive, I was surprised to find that I have only had simple strawberry-and-chocolate combinations a few times.  From Ample Hills, their Be Mine flavor had chocolate flakes in strawberry ice cream.  For pints more similar to this one where the base was neutral and strawberries and chocolate were included as mix-ins, I found McConnell's Chocolate Covered Strawberries (sweet cream base and strawberry pieces) and Tillamook's Chocolate Covered Strawberry (mascarpone base and layered mix-ins including strawberry sauce).  Let's see how this compares!

Removing the lid, I see a light colored vanilla base with lots of small mix-ins.  There are a lot of dark-brown chocolate pieces as well as some wine-colored marbling of the strawberry sauce.  Digging my spoon in reveals more distinct swirls of the strawberry sauce.  The strawberry swirl has variable density throughout the pint.  I took an extra picture below to show different views.  Digging my spoon in, the strawberry sauce is noticeably tart, yet still quite delicious.  The chocolate stracciatella shows up as variable-sized flakes.  I have to double check to see if there are two different chocolates here.  There are some dark chocolate pieces which have a little bit sharper flavor and I guess they decided that they did not what all of the pieces to be that sharp.  It works.

This is a delicious mixture of chocolate and strawberry mix-ins from Sweet Science.  It is a tart-strawberry and not a sweet-strawberry so you should be prepared for that, but given that expectation, it is quite delicious.  I liked this pint better than both the McConnell's and Tillamook implementations linked above.  McConnell's has sweeter strawberries but as they are pieces they can be frozen so it creates an odd texture while the main issue with Tillamook is the way they do their layered flavors.  The layers are too tough and it is hard to mix up with the spoon as you eat it.  Sweet Science seems like the best combination -- a good swirling of strawberry sauce and chocolate flakes.  Just be aware of the tartness.