Izzy's - Swedish Garden Party

Swedish Garden Party - Elderflower based ice cream with raspberry swirl and crumbled ginger snap cookies

The flavor of the day is from the Saint Paul-based Izzy's Ice Cream.  It is called Swedish Garden Party.  I have have recently decided to get hand-packed pints of Izzy's most interesting flavors.  I did this because I found I had been reviewing more pints from other local brands such as Sweet Science, Milkjam or even Pumphouse because not enough of Izzy's most interesting flavors come pre-packaged in pint form.  Today's flavor is not one of their People's Flavor Winners, but it looks quite interesting nonetheless.  It is an elderflower ice cream with a raspberry swirl and has ginger snap pieces as the mix-in.  Looks good.  The fact that I am 25% Swedish sealed the deal for me, so I picked it up.  Izzy's originally made this flavor for American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis.

Opening the pint, the base ice cream is quite light in color.  The elderflower and raspberry don't add much color.  We've seen this before in the Raspberry Little Italy pint.  It is a light-colored raspberry.  Digging in, I immediately taste the raspberry.  It has a delicious flavor and is slightly tart.  I have never had elderflower in an ice cream before and I was curious as to what it would taste like.  Elderflower has been in the news recently as it was the flavor of choice for Prince Harry & Meghan Markle's wedding cake.  From that linked article, I read that expect a sweet and floral flavor.  Here, I mainly taste raspberry, but perhaps the elderflower blends into the mix in ways that I don't fully understand.  It is a different raspberry flavor than what is found in that Raspberry Little Italy pint.  At any rate, it tastes pretty good.  The ginger snap pieces are generously crumbled throughout the pint. They are soft, chewy and provide a mild dose of ginger.

This is a pretty good pint of ice cream.  The raspberry swirl and ginger snaps tasted good and went well together.  I'd be curious to see how the elderflower tastes when there are not other strong flavors to distract me.  I liked it, but the slight tartness kept me from liking it as much as Raspberry Little Italy.  Of course, people with Swedish ancestry should check this out, too.