Sweet Science - Cookies and Cream

Cookies and Cream - Vanilla Ice Cream with Newman-O Chocolate Sandwich Cookies

Today we review the first of the two January flavors from the Saint Paul-based Sweet Science brand.  This is Cookies and Cream.  I can't believe they haven't done this flavor yet!  Perhaps they have, but it was before I started following them in the fall of 2017.  It looks like they are following the lead of several other organic ice creams and using Newman-O's instead of Oreos.  It should be fun to see how it turns out.

Removing the lid, the top of the pint has an off-white color with some speckles from the cookies visible.  There are differences in cookies-and-cream implementations in how much to crush the cookies.  Some Oreo-based implementations crush the cookies into fine powdery crumbs which colors the base ice cream grey.  The Newman-O's used here are softer and chewier than Oreo's so just a moderate amount of some small crumbs are visible.  Digging in, the vanilla base is good.  It is a bit smoother than usual, so I checked the ingredients and saw that they added white chocolate into the mix.  It tastes good.  Then I encounter the cookie pieces.  They taste quite good, but there are not as many of them as I expected.

This is a simple and straightforward implementation of a cookies and cream ice cream.  The base and the cookies are both tasty.  The only flaw is that the density of the cookie mix-ins is not as high as I was expecting.  Maybe that's something that changes from batch to batch?  I'll be curious to see if this is truly a "January seasonal" or if it gets promoted into the regular scoop-shop rotation.