Van Leeuwen - Pizza

Pizza - Cream Cheese and Mozzarella Ice Cream with a Tomato Jam Swirl and Basil Crust Cookies

 

Van Leeuwen Ice Cream of Brooklyn has partnered with Walmart this spring to stock seven exclusive flavors.  See instagram link here and news story link here.  I have already tried two of the flavors:  the surprisingly agreeable but rather tame Kraft Macaroni and Cheese that made national news last fall and the excellent Royal Wedding Cake.  That leaves five more me to try.  I picked them all up at the Walmart in Roseville on Cleveland and County Road C.  The first flavor I decided to try is the boldest:  Pizza!  (instagram link here).  It features a mozarella and cream cheese base with a tomato jam swirl and basil crust cookies.  So, it is mainly the tomato jam which gives it the pizza theme with some mozzarella and basil also included.  

This is the first time that I have had tomato in a pint before.  The tomato is a New World species and was brought back to Europe by returning Spanish explorers.  So, its ubiquity in Italian cuisine dates back only a few hundred years.  Botanically, a tomato is an edible berry, but the fruit contains a high amount of glutamic acid which gives it a much more savory umami flavor than most other fruits.  Because of this, the tomato is usually considered a vegetable for culinary purposes.  This umami flavor is also the most likely reason why I have not had it in an ice cream yet.  Tomatoes do not tend to go well in sweet things such as desserts.  It will be very interesting as to how Van Leeuwen blends this flavor in here.  Let's check it out.

Removing the lid and peeling back the protective foil, I see mainly the off-white yellow color of the cream cheese mozzarella base.  There are a couple of small red streaks indicative of the tomato jam swirl.  Digging in, I taste mostly cream cheese.  If I focus, I might be able to detect a hint of mozzarella flavor, but mozzarella is a fairly mild flavor so it is not strong.  Occasionally, I encounter a small streak of tomato jam.  If I strategically lick, I can taste a little bit of tomato flavor but it is quickly overwhelmed by the cream cheese flavor in the rest of the spoonful.  This seems to be a common strategy in some of these bold, savory ice cream flavors.  Overwhelm the pint which a soothing flavor like cream cheese and then just dole out small doses of the bold flavor.  It is a lot like a cold, creamy 'cheese plate' that you might get as an hors d'oeuvre.  Occasionally, I run into some basil cookie pieces.  These aren't bad, but they played it safe again and were very easy on the basil.  Basil has been shown to work well in ice cream (see previous review), maybe they did not need to be so cautious.  I continue to eat my way down.  At the very bottom of the pint, I ran into a larger dollop of tomato jam.  It tasted too ketchup-y to me and made me wish I had saved more cream cheese base to balance it.  All in all, though, it was not as bold and daring as I had feared.

This is an interesting savory pint from Van Leeuwen.  I think it appeals mostly to the curious who want to see if a tomato-based mix-in could be incorporated into a pint.  In that regard, it was successful.  If you keep your eye out for larger sections of the tomato jam swirl and make sure you always have enough cream cheese to balance it, then it's pretty edible, but I doubt this would be anyone's favorite flavor.  At any rate, I can now add the 'tomato' tag to my side bar and say that I've tried it.