Häagen-Dazs Artisan - Tres Leches Brigadeiro

Tres Leches Brigadeiro -
Tres Leches Ice Cream with a Brigadiero Swirl

Today is another Artisan review: Tres Leches Brigadeiro  As a reminder, for Artisan flavors, Häagen-Dazs commissions a specialty bakery to concoct their own ice cream flavor.  The result is usually an eclectic mixture of ingredients which seems fitting for the types of ice cream reviewed here.  Today's flavor is crafted by Paula Barbosa of the My Sweet Brigadeiro bakery in Brooklyn and she has worked her specialty, the brigadeiro, into the flavor.

A brigadeiro is a Brazilian dessert made with cocoa and condensed milk which was invented during World War II -- possibly due to shortages of regular milk during the war period but the creamy sweetness of condensed milk helped make a tasty dessert which survives to this day.  They are small golfball shaped confections which are often individually wrapped and frosted.

The base ice cream derives from the popular Latin American Tres Leches cake.  I took French in high school so I want to pronounce it <tray lesh> but it is Spanish, so it is pronounced <trace lay-chase>.  It means "three milks", usually condensed milk, evaporated milk and heavy cream.  With Tres Leches cake, you bake a regular cake and then a half an hour after it comes out of the oven you poke holes in the top of the cake and pour the three milks over it so that cake absorbs it and becomes moist with the three-milk mixture.  Here the three milks are just incorporated into the base ice cream.  Note that both the base and the swirl of this pint have condensed milk.

Popping off the lid, the brigadeiro swirl is quite evident on top and creates a very marbled appearance.  Eating into the pint, the base was very sweet and creamy.  I definitely noted the absence of vanilla and it was a bit sweeter and heavier than sweet cream.  The brigadeiro swirls added chocolate flavor.  The chocolate had a bit of a kick to it, not unlike chocolate syrup.

A fairly interesting pint.  It was fairly good, but I did not love it.  It was quite educational reading about the ingredients, it really made me want to go out and have some tres leches cake and brigadeiros!  I think some of the unique texture is lost when swirled up into an ice cream.  The result is a condensed milk base with a chocolate swirl.  That said, those ingredients are certainly tasty enough for what they are.