Van Leeuwen - Planet Earth

Planet Earth - Blue Spirulina Almond Ice Cream with Pieces of Matcha Green Tea Cake

The next flavor in the Brooklyn-based Van Leeuwen Ice Cream's spring line of Walmart-exclusive flavors is called Planet Earth (instagram link here).  This flavor features a blue spirulina almond base with pieces of matcha green tea cake.  Interesting flavor combination!  Let's see how this turns out.

Removing the lid, the base ice cream is quite blue!  I see one of the green matcha tea cake pieces on top already as well.  Digging in, I quickly see the planet earth connection here.  It looks a bit like a globe.  The blue is the water and the green was the land.  Perhaps that was obvious and I could have anticipated it above, but it looks pretty cool and I see it now.  The base is made from almond extract and it is sweeter than I expected.  It has a sweet, agreeable and aromatic flavor that many almond-extract foods have that is different than that of the flavor of crushed almonds.  I do not know how else to describe it.  It is good.  Spirulina is a blue-green-algae-derived superfood which is very nutritious but I am reading that it is mostly flavorless.  Here, it supplies the beautiful color.  The matcha cake pieces are chewy and have a mild tea flavor to them.  Matcha can be an acquired taste for some, but there are no worries here because the flavor is not too strong and it is immersed such an agreeable almond ice cream.  Mostly, it provides the beautiful green color.

This is a fun and beautiful "planet-earth" based ice cream.  The spirulina and matcha provide lots of nutrition and bright color but flavor-wise it is the pleasant almond-extract base which dominates.