Van Leeuwen - Honeycomb

Honeycomb - Sweet Cream with Caramel Candy

I decided to try a new brand today, the Brooklyn-based Van Leeuwen ice cream.  I found a pint of it at one of my favorite local markets in Saint Paul, Tim & Tom's Speedy Market.  They have a surprisingly good ice cream selection there.  I figure because Van Leeuwen is based in New York City, that it gives me more ice cream to try when I visit that city as well.  I am never sure how to pronounce Dutch names and Van Leeuwen is no exception.  Thankfully, readers do not have to hear me try.  They got their start as a food truck in 2008 and have expanded to over a dozen scoop shops in the New York City area as well as on the west coast.  Today's flavor is called Honeycomb and is one of their signature flavors.  Interestingly, there is no honey in honeycomb.  It is a sweet cream with a chewy-crunchy caramel candy -- which evidently reminded someone of honeycomb candy.  This should be fun.

Opening the pint, I see some interesting orangeish-brown splotches right away on the top.  They seem to have created small coated voids in the base.  Is this the honeycomb candy?  Digging in, the sweet cream base is quite thick and creamy.  This is a good base.  There is a salted caramel flavor to the mix-ins.  Perhaps a slightly more burnt caramel flavor than the usual caramel mix-ins.  The salt is quite noticeable.  The sweet cream does a pretty good job of balancing the mix-in and making sure it isn't too strong.  The 'coated void' nature of the mix-ins persist throughout the pint, though, and it is not at all crunchy or chewy like the side of the pint implied that it would be.  I think the mix-ins may have dissolved in the pint!  I have seen this before with McConnell's Peppermint Stick flavor.  I think the candy slowly diffused into the surrounding sweet cream leaving the voids.  The effect in the Peppermint Stick flavor -- a melted candy in a mint base was rather cool --  but here I get the impression that the chewy/crunchy nature of the mix-in has been lost.

I'm not sure how to rate this pint because of what happened to the mix-ins.  The salted caramel was good.  The sweet cream was very good.  Nothing at all wrong with the flavors.  But the way the mix-ins dissolved does not appear intended.  I think we're supposed to munch on this 'honeycomb'.  Perhaps I will visit a scoop shop the next time I am in New York and see if things are any different there.