Sebastian Joe's - KARE 11 Golden Sunrise

KARE 11 Golden Sunrise - Lemon Ice Cream with Shortbread Cookies and Lemon Pieces

I returned to Minneapolis' Sebastian Joe's Ice Cream last week.  This time I went to the Lowry Hill scoop shop on Franklin instead of the one in Linden Hills.  I was only planning on picking up a couple of pints but ended up seeing so many flavors that I ended up going home with three.  My freezer is too full.  It may be the end of the month before I end up getting to all of these.  The first flavor is called KARE 11 Golden Sunrise.  The woman at the scoop shop said it was a lemon cookie flavor.  I am not exactly sure of the exact details of the flavor because the flavor links at the website appear to be missing any of those details.  I picked it up because I really like lemon. 

The flavor is named after the morning show for the local NBC affiliate, KARE 11.  I figure there must have been a segment on the show where Sebastian Joe's was featured and the on-air personalities tried out their flavor.  I found a 2011 facebook post from Sebastian Joe's but it points to a dead link on the KARE 11 website.  That's a bummer because these types of segments are fun and would likely contain lots of details about the flavor.  Maybe someone can find it buried in an archive somewhere.

Anyhow, on to the ice cream!  Removing the lid shows the ice cream packed in super tight and almost overflowing the container.  That is awesome.  Thanks Sebastian Joe's scooper!  Their ice cream always looks super thick.  The base color is an off-white yellow color and I see a lot of light brown crushed cookies.  Occasionally, I can see some of the ridge detail on the cookie pattern.  You can see the pattern in the second photo below.  The pattern is similar to -- but not the same as -- the cookies used in Lemon Oreos.  Digging in, the base flavor is not super lemon-y, but I quickly encounter some delicious lemon mix-ins which provide most of the lemon flavor.  I took photos of them below.  They look like small rectangular pieces of lemon peel which have been soaked in a sweet lemon syrup.  They are delicious!  If I couldn't see the peel texture, I might think they were small gummi worms.  The cookie pieces are scattered throughout the ping and provide a crunchines which goes quite well with the lemon flavor.

This is an excellent lemon cookie flavor from Sebastian Joe's!  I have had a lemon cookie flavor once before (from Three Twins) and this flavor is easily better than that one.  As much as I like lemon-flavored desserts, it is challenge to put the flavor in an ice cream because the acidity does not mix well with dairy.  These chewy gummi-like peel mix-ins are a very innovative and successful way of delivering lemon flavor.  Lemon lovers should definitely check this out -- even if you watch a different channel in the morning.

Coolhaus - Hey!! Cupcake

Hey!! Cupcake - Vanilla Frosting Ice Cream with Rainbow Sprinkles and Cupcake Bites

Greetings!  I have reached the end of my shipment from the Culver-City based Coolhaus Ice Cream.  The sixth and final pint of the shipment is called Hey!! Cupcake.  The cupcakes here are based on a sheet cake with vanilla frosting and rainbow sprinkles.  Looks sort of similar to a McConnell's flavor that I had a while back.  It should be interesting to compare and contrast those two flavors.  As with all the flavors in this Coolhaus shipment, I should point out that I ordered these pints online because they are not available near me in Minnesota.  You may find them in other cities (or if you also order from Coolhaus online) but I have not found them in the Twin Cities area yet.

On to the ice cream!  Removing the lid, I am created by a cool emoji.  This emoji is called "Person Raising Both Hands in Celebration" has been part of the unicode standard since 2010.  I always thought this emoji was giving me a double-high-five, but I guess it is just celebrating.  Peeling back the foil, I see the bright white color of the vanilla frosting base with quite a bit of colorful sprinkles on one side of the top.  The color has bled away from the sprinkles a bit and into the surrounding base.  It looks rather neat.  The ice cream appears softer than usual and it is.  I think it is the frosting mixed into the base.  It is not nearly as soft as the Aunt Gladys Yellow Cake Batter flavor which had alcohol in it to lower its freezing point, but it is definitely softer than the usual Coolhaus pint.  Digging in, the base tastes good but it is also quite sweet.  I can definitely taste the frosting in the mix.  The cupcake bites are quite good.  They are little cupcake nuggets which are chewy and provide a good contrast with the base.  The sprinkles add mostly color to the mix -- it is a beautiful looking pint -- but occasionally I noticed some extra sweetness from biting into one.

This is a fun sprinkle-cupcake-themed flavor from Coolhaus.  In the battle of the sprinkle-cake flavors I think I liked McConnell's a bit better.  The difference is that this pint is definitely sweeter.  You could easily get a sugar high from all the frosting that is blended into the base.  McConnell's on the other hand somehow put in enough buttercream to keep the sugar from getting to be too much.  They are both Southern California brands so if you live in that part of the country you could try both flavors and compare them for yourself.

Museum of Ice Cream - PB & P

PB & P - Peanut Buttery Ice Cream with Chocolatey Covered Pretzel Pieces & Peanut Butter Swirls

Today we return to the Museum of Ice Cream for the last of the new flavors that they released in 2019.  This flavor is called PB & P.  Everyone knows what PB & J is: peanut butter and jelly.  Here, instead of jelly, they add pretzels so they call it PB & P.  Searching my archives for "pretzel", I can see several similar flavors.  Several interesting combinations of chocolate, butter and pretzels are in there.  The one that looks the most simialr to me would be the other one which has a peanut butter base:  Talenti's Peanut Butter & Pretzel.  The Museum of Ice Cream brand is available in Minnesota from Target stores.  I bought this pint at their Saint Paul Midway location.

Popping off the lid and removing the extra foil, I see the peanut butter base is a creamy off-white yellow color.  A hint of the pretzel mix-ins can be seen from time to time and also some darker brown sections which appear to be the peanut butter swirl.  As I dig down into the ice cream, the peanut butter swirls appear to be mostly blended into the base  That is OK as it is still a good peanut butter flavor.  Then I encounter the chocolate covered pretzels.  There is a bit more chocolate on some of these pieces than I expected which is a pleasant surprise.  I was also impressed that the pretzels were really crunchy.  In fact, every third or so piece was super-crunchy to the point where I thought the pretzel was fresh and had not been immersed in the ice cream since the factory.

This is a very well-done implementation of a peanut butter and pretzel falvor from the Museum of Ice Cream.  I actually enjoyed this flavor better than Talenti's pint using the same flavor combination.  The Museum of Ice Cream got a bit of grief last year that their first batches of flavors were too sweet and/or sugar-candy based.  This summer's releases went for much more rich flavors such as malt and peanut butter.  It will be interesting to see which direction they explore in the future.

Coolhaus - Thai Town Crunch

Thai Town Crunch - Thai Tea Ice Cream with White Chocolate Covered Fortune Cookies

For today's flavor, I return to the Culver-City based Coolhaus brand for their Thai Town Crunch flavor.  This is not one of the standard flavors that are available in my local Minnesota grocery stores, so I ordered it online and had it shipped to me.  The flavor is based on Thai iced tea which is a staple at most Thai restaurants.  Thai iced tea is a brewed Ceylon tea which is mixed with sugar and sweetened condensed milk.  It should be fun to see how this flavor translates into an ice cream.  Here, Coolhaus also adds some mix-ins -- white chocolate-covered fortune cookies.  Let's check it out.

Removing the lid, the Thai iced tea base is a very bright orange color.  This is as orange as most pumpkin bases!  Also, I notice they have sprinkled a fair amount of the white-chocolate-covered cookies over the top.  It looks quite nice and is another example of Coolhaus giving a good impression right away.  Digging in, the iced tea base is delicious.  The color does seem to be a bit exaggerated, but it does have excellent sweetened tea flavor.  The white chocolate-covered cookies are not just on the top, they are distributed liberally throughout the pint as well.  They are mostly white chocolate -- not much cookie -- but they provide nice textural variation as I eat my way down.

This is a well-done implementation of a Thai iced tea ice cream.  The orange coloring is a bit over the top, but fun.  The mix-ins were decent.  I would have preferred a little more cookie underneath the white chocolate, but they still provided me something interesting to chew on while I was enjoying the excellent base.  White chocolate is a very neutral flavor for me.  It does not bring much by itself but it does not distract from the other flavors either.  Thai iced tea lovers will want to check this out.

Tillamook - Oregon Hazelnut Chocolate

Oregon Hazelnut Chocolate - Hazelnut Gelato with a Fudge Swirl and Oregon Hazelnuts

Today's flavor is another special-batch pint from the Oregon-based Tillamook Creamery.  This flavor is called Oregon Hazelnut Chocolate.  I bought it at Kowalski's on Grand Avenue in Saint Paul.  Hazelnut and chocolate is a well-known combination -- it is the basis for Nutella after all.  I have seen this combination before from a now-retired Ben & Jerry's core flavor, a Coolhaus sundae flavor, and a Talenti Gelato flavor which is probably the closest.  Let's check it out!

Removing the lid shows another one of those fun and cheeky phrases on the protective foil between the lid and the ice cream.  Coolhaus was the first brand I saw that was having fun with these, but now it seems like several places are joining in.  Peeling back this foil shows lots of chocolate and lots of nuts.  As I dig in, I observe that all the mix-ins are piled on top and most of the pint consists of the homogeneous hazelnut base.  The mix-ins are quite good -- crunchy hazelnuts immersed in rich chocolate sauce -- and I employ a strategy to make this top layer of mix-ins last as long as I can.  Similar to how I eat Ben & Jerry's core flavors, I will take a big spoonful of the base and then scoop in a little bit of the chocolate and hazelnuts into it.  This works for about a third of the pint, but then I am left with just the base.  It's a good base, though.  It is soft, rich and creamy.  Then as I near the bottom of the pint, I notice an additional layer of chocolate (no nuts).  The chocolate has clumped a bit on the sides and I have to scrape it off with my spoon.  That is a bit annoying but in some cases it worked out because I ended up with some big chunks of chocolate at the end.

This pint from Tillamook had all the ingredients, but like other recent pints of theirs I found it a little frustrating that all the mix-ins were bunched on the top and bottom leaving a bunch of relatively plain base in between.  These layers didn't lend themselves to blending themselves as I was eating the pint like many of the recent Talenti layers releases do.  So, for this flavor combination I prefer a pint from Talenti's non-layered line called Hazelnut Chocolate Chip.  The nut pieces there are a little smaller and the chocolate chips more subtle than the chocolate sauce used here but everything was fully blended.  Of course, if piling all the mix-ins on top appeals to you, you could give this a try.

Coolhaus - Cereal Dreams

Cereal Dreams - Cereal Soaked Milk Ice Cream with Crispy Cereal Swirl

The ice cream for today is the fourth pint from my six-pint shipment from the Culver-City-based Coolhaus Ice Cream.  This flavor is called Cereal Dreams and is a cereal-milk flavored ice with with a swirl of cereal.  I enjoy cereal-based flavors.  Cereal goes well in milk, so it is natural that it would go well in other dairy-based products such as ice cream.  There is a often challenge with keeping the cereal from becoming soggy in the cream because it is not added right before you eat it.  It will be interesting to see how Coolhaus tries to deal with this.    I ordered this pint online and had it shipped to me, so I am not aware that this flavor is available in Minnesota.  If you are reading from other states, perhaps they have a wider selection of Coolhaus pints.  Let's dig in!

Removing the lid, the cereal milk base is bright white in color.  I can see some golden speckling in a swirl on one side of the pint.  I find that the golden speckling gets a bit denser the further I dig further down, but there are no larger cereal pieces.  The golden speckling is the swirl.  It tastes good, it reminds me of the flavor of a good generic wheat/corn flakes in milk, but I certainly would not say that it was crispy.  The cereal milk base has a very mild flavor by itself, but it accompanies the cereal swirl quite well.

This is a fairly straightforward and mild implementation of a cereals-in-milk ice cream.  The flavor is quite good, and I did enjoy eating it.  They solved the soggy cereal problem by grinding the cereal pieces into finer crumbs before swirling them in.  It provides good cereal flavor but no crunchiness or crispiness.  You can certainly enjoy this flavor for it's good flavor -- just know ahead of time how fine the cereal crumb mix-ins will be.

Sebastian Joe's - Danza di Limon

Danza di Limon - Lemon Ice Cream with Slivered Almonds

Today's flavor is another from the Minneapolis-based Sebastian Joe's Ice Cream.  It is called Danza di Limon.  It's a lemon ice cream with slivered almonds.  I picked it up at the scoop shop in Linden Hills a couple of weeks ago.  The name appears to be roughly Italian for "lemon dance" which sounds fun.  I love lemon and I am always looking for well-done lemon-centric ice cream flavors.  Here the lemon is paired with almonds -- a rather unique combination.  It looks quite interesting and I'm looking forward to checking this out.

Opening the pint, the lemon-base is a very bright yellowish white color which quite a lot of almonds visible right away.  I was not expecting that many almonds.  I have mentioned this before but Sebastian Joe's bases always have a dense and thick look to them.  Digging in, I taste the lemon flavor but it is a little more muted than I expected.  It's not a lemon-creme pie or lemon-bar type of base, it's more like a thick sweet cream with a significant twist of lemon.  The slivered almonds are so numerous that I often feel like there are nuts in the base, too.  The nuts are numerous enough that I often felt like I was eating a pistachio ice cream.  They are delicious and provide plenty of crunch. 

This is a fun and surprisingly nutty pint of ice cream.  I really like lemon, and the lemon is tasty here, but the lemon plays more of a supporting role to all the nuts.  It's quite good, but so unique that I'm not really sure what to compare it to.  If you see it in stocked in the scooping bins on your next visit to Sebastian Joe's, give it a taste.