Izzy's - Raspberry Little Italy

Raspberry Little Italy -  Mascarpone Ice Cream with Chocolate Chunks and a Raspberry Swirl

I've written recently about how I have been having trouble finding the best flavors that the local Saint Paul-based Izzy's brand has to offer in pint form.  My recent reviews have been gravitating more towards other local brands such as Sweet Science, Milkjam Creamery and Pumphouse.  Those brands offer more interesting flavors as pre-packaged pints.  I focus my reviews on pints for several reasons.  As you can tell by the photos, I like the packaging aspect of a pint of ice cream.  Eating pints also lets me sample the national brands which are available in supermarkets -- after all, a survey of Ben & Jerry's is how this all got started.  It isn't as if I haven't been able to have Izzy's at all.  Several interesting pints from Izzy's have been reviewed over the past few years, but when I look at what options in pints I could try next, I mainly see base flavors such as chocolate and vanilla.  This has been frustrating because I know Izzy's has lots of imaginative flavors.  I enjoy them when I go to the scoop shop.  I enjoy them at the State Fair.  To remedy this, I have decided to do something different.  I am going to have some of their more interesting flavors hand-packed into pints for me at the scoop shop.  I understand that this is possibly a dangerous door to open.  Scoop shops often have a much wider selection of flavors available than what they offer in packaged form and Izzy's is no exception.  Thankfully, every other year Izzy's has a flavor design contest called the People's Flavor Awards.    In this contest, customers submit flavor designs, Izzy's selects and implements the most promising suggestions, they have a flavor-tasting contest and select the winners.  A list of winning flavors from this contest seems like a good list to work off whenever I feel like I need a pint of Izzy's.  Two flavors from this list -- Midnight Snack and Irish Moxie -- have been available in pint form and are quite good, so that's a good sign.

Enough back story.  What is today's flavor?  Why it is the 2017 People's Flavor Award winner Raspberry Little Italy.  It is frequently available at the scoop shop.  It contains the raspberry and chocolate chip combination that is quite popular.  The 'little italy' is a nod to the fact that they use mascarpone as the base ice cream.  In picture above I mocked up a sticker to make it look a little bit more like their packaged pints.  A closer inspection would show that Izzy's uses more imaginative fonts, but if you don't closely inspect, it doesn't look too bad.  Ha ha...

Opening the pint, the hand-packed mascarpone base is bulging up over the top of the container.  I think I might have gotten an extra half ounce!  The base looks quite thick.  Some of the chocolate chips are visible and they look large and substantial.  The raspberry swirl is a lighter color than I expected but it is there.  It is almost marbled into the base rather than swirled.  Digging in the mascarpone base is very dense.  Some of that could be due to the hand-packing but mascarpone is a form of cream cheese which is thicker than cream so it could just be that.  The base did not have the specific 'flavor finish' (or aftertaste) that mascarpone often has, but it was quite satisfying.  The flavor of the raspberry was delicious.  I noted before that the color was lighter but a little bit of raspberry goes a long way.  It was a good balance of sweetness and tartness -- not too much of either.  The chocolate chips were not incredibly numerous but each chip was more like a chunk.  They supplied quite a bit of chocolate flavor to almost every spoonful.

This is an excellent pint of ice cream.  It has all the appeal of the raspberry chocolate chip flavors that are so popular these days, but the mascarpone base adds a rich and decadent dimension to it.  It was very delicious and I was very full after eating it.  I am looking forward to trying other People's Flavor Award winners.