Ample Hills - The Scoop

The Scoop - Marshmallow Ice Cream with Pieces of Blue Velvet Cake

For my first two points of my trip to New York, I just went to the Whole Foods on the upper East Side.  For my next two pints, I decided to go to the Ample Hills scoop shop in Gotham West Market on 44th and 11th in Hell's Kitchen.  I picked up a couple of limited batch pints.  Something about a seasonal or limited batch release adds urgency to my ice cream tastings.  The first of these flavors is called The Scoop and is in honor of the fortieth anniversary of the ABC news-magazine program 20/20.  Here are links to articles about the flavor collaboration from both Ample Hills and ABC News (though I believe the video linked within each article is the same).  The artwork on the side of the carton is quite nice.  I believe the video goes into that.

The flavor is a marshmallow ice cream with a blue velvet cake mix-in.  Everyone knows red velvet cake, but I had not heard of blue velvet cake before.  Is it the same recipe with different food coloring?  I looked and recipes vary quite a bit.  Recipes for red velvet cake can vary too, but the standard implementation is a buttermilk-cocoa cake with heaps of red food coloring.  Checking the ingredient list for this blue-velvet-cake pint, I see no buttermilk or cocoa.  Interestingly, I also only see egg whites, so it appears like this is a white cake with heaps of blue food coloring.  This has the visual effect of allowing the cake to be a brighter blue color -- something desirable here as blue is the color of ABC News and the 20/20 program.

I decided to eat this pint right there in the Gotham West Market.  As I opened the pint, the marshmallow base is bright white in color and a few specks of the blue velvet cake are visible on top.  As I dig in, the marshmallow flavor is noticeable and quite sweet.  As I dig in, the I start to encounter the cake pieces.  They are a beautiful bright blue color.  These cake pieces do taste like white cake.  They are soft and sweet with the occasional harder piece of cream cheese frosting which is also sweet.  All of this sweetness had me concerned that I might get overwhelmed or end up with a sugar headache, but I did not have that problem.  I was not as sweet as last fall's Marshmallow Moon which had swirls of marshmallow.  There was enough creaminess in the base to temper the marshmallow and cake and I was able to eat the entire pint in one sitting.

This was a fun pint of ice cream.  The blue and white color was quite visually appealing and suiting the connection with ABC News quite well.  With marshmallow and cake, it is a sweeter flavor than most.  It was not too sweet for me, but I am the type of person who eats a couple of pints of ice cream per week.  Plus, I have been doing a ton of walking in New York City and could use the extra energy.  This pint is good, but be prepared for marshmallows and cake.