Dreyer's - Hostess Twinkies Ice Cream

Twinkies Ice Cream - Sweet Butter Cream Ice Cream with Sponge Cake Pieces and a Frosting Swirl

Today we try something different.  I always check the freezer case whenever I visit any store.  That includes 7-11 where lately pints of Twinkies Ice Cream has been catching my eye.  Normally, I do not review all the novelty ice creams with brand tie-ins -- there seems to be one associated with every candy bar -- but Twinkies occupy a very fun, nostalgic and kitschy part of my memory banks.  As a kid, we often had a box of Twinkies in the freezer.  My mother used to keep the box in the freezer to make them last longer -- which didn't make much sense because with four of us kids, the box never last longer than a couple of days.  It does mean that I am used to eating them frozen. 

Twinkies were first created in the 1930s by the Continental Baking Company -- the makers "Wonder Bread".  Continental already made a cream-filled strawberry shortcake product.  One of Continental's, James Dewar, noticed that the machinery used for making that product sat idle when strawberries were not in season, so he came up with product which used a banana filling and called it the "Twinkie" and they were sold under Continental's Hostess Brand which also included the famous CupCake.  Banana rations during WWII forced them to switch to vanilla cream -- a switch that was so popular that they did not switch back.  It become one of the most popular snack cakes of the post-war era.  The original company went bankrupt in 2012 but a product as iconic as the Twinkie could not be kept away from the American public.  It lives on as as a brand and the company which manages this brand trades on the stock market under the ticker symbol TWNK.  Here, they have partnered with Nestle Dreyer's (Edy's) Ice Cream to convert the Twinkie into an ice cream flavor.

On to the ice cream!  Before I even opened the pint, I notice that it is quite light.  They do use a "14-ounce pint" to cut costs like Baskin-Robbins and Häagen-Dazs do, but it seems even lighter than that.  I examined the packaging and there are only 160 calories per 4-ounce (quarter-pint) serving.  The ice creams I normally eat are usually around 250 calories, sometimes as high as 300.  Then I checked the ingredient list and they use skim milk.  Could Twinkies Ice Cream be healthy?  They still label it as ice cream, though.  The FDA requires a certain milkfat content for that, otherwise you have to call it 'frozen dessert'.  Opening the lid, the top of the pint is yellow -- Twinkie colored, so far so good.  Digging my spoon in, the ice cream is quite sweet.  There are yellow cake pieces generously distributed throughout the pint which stayed soft in the frozen ice cream.  The frosting swirl simulated the creme filling and was also quite good.  It did indeed taste like a Twinkie!

I was expecting this pint to be a total disaster which I would ironically enjoy anyways, but it was actually pretty good.   The one thing to look out for is the sweetness.  It did build up over the course of the pint and left me with a bit of a headache for a while afterwards.  I have eaten a lot of pints of ice cream in the past couple of years and that normally does not happen.  It reminded me of eating cupcakes.  Fun while you are eating them, but don't overdo it.  Maybe Twinkies snack cakes are the same way.