Pumphouse Creamery - Peppermint Bark

Peppermint Bark - Peppermint Chocolate Ice Cream with Chocolate Chips and White Chocolate Chunks

I went back to Pumphouse Creamery in Minneapolis last week to pick up a few pints, so I will be going through those in the next couple of weeks.  The first flavor is Peppermint Bark.  I think of this as being a holiday flavor, but Pumphouse keeps it in the rotation all winter long.  I figured I'd take advantage of its availability and pick it up.  This is the fourth pint of peppermint bark that I have had -- previous implementations have been from Häagen-Dazs, Talenti and Sweet Science.  It will be interesting to see how this compares.  Let's check it out.

Removing the lid shows all brown -- the peppermint and chocolate are fully blended in the base ice cream.  This is the first I have seen of that.  Most use a peppermint base and chocolate chips (although Sweet Science marbled vanilla mint and chocolate ice cream bases).  Digging in the base tastes like a homogeneous blend of peppermint and chocolate ice creams, so each flavor is about half-strength compared to a straight peppermint or straight chocolate base.  It reminds me of a 'light chocolate' base which I saw in a previous review.  Eating my way down, I quickly encounter the large white chocolate nuggets.  These have the expected chunky texture of white chocolate.  I also see a fair amount of regular chocolate chips as well, though the density of these is not super high.

This is a pretty good pint of peppermint bark ice cream.  I'm a bit mint chocolate chip fan, so my preference is for something a bit mintier, but I understand the need to distinguish this from the standard mint-chocolate-chip.  The blended base and the white chocolate chunks certainly do that.  I am looking forward to trying Pumphouse's mint chocolate chip one day.