Izzy's - Butter Queen Coffee

Butter Queen Coffee - Brown Butter and Coffee Ice Cream with Chocolate Covered Espresso Flakes

Today, we return to the Saint Paul-based Izzy's Ice Cream for a flavor that they release for the 2015 State Fair called Butter Queen Coffee.  Some contemporaneous links about the introduction of this flavor are available here and here.  It is encouraging to see that the flavor is still in the scoop shop location a few years later. 

The name of the flavor is due to the back that the base ice cream contains both coffee and brown butter and also because there is a long standing tradition of making butter sculptures of the pageant-like queen of the State Fair.  Yes, you read that correctly.  It is one of the quirkier things that happens at the Minnesota State Fair.  The Midwest Dairy Queen will crown a Princess Kay of the Milky Way to act as a goodwill ambassador for the year.  One of her duties is to sit in a refrigerated glass room while a sculptor carves her likeness in a giant hunk of butter.  Because it is a glass room, fair-goers can can gather around and witness this happening.  There are lots of photos of this on google image search.  It is one of the things that out-of-towners love to see when they visit because where else can you see crowned festival queen sitting in an ice box wearing their tiara with their winter coat?

Anyhow, now that you know about the origin of the flavor name, how does it taste?  Let's find out!  Removing the lid, I see the coffee base is perhaps a little bit darker than normal with quite a few chocolate pieces visible right on top.  The first spoonful tastes like coffee, but it is a bit caramel-like as well, so I can taste the brown butter in there as well.  The chocolate chips are delicious.  Some of the chips are more than just chocolate.  I can taste the crunchy espresso flakes in the center of some of the chips.  Also, some of the chips are almost toffee-like.  It seems fitting with the brown butter in the base that there might be some toffee mixed in with the mix-ins as well.

This is a very delicious pint of ice cream.  At its core, this is a coffee-chocolate-chip-like flavor but with some twists to make it unique -- namely the caramel-like brown butter in the base and the espresso flakes and toffee in the mix-ins.  I think the combination works quite well.  It is not as exotic as this year's Dessa's Night Drive which includes cardamom but this is still quite good.  If you are a coffee-and-chocolate fan interested in a twist on that classic combination check this out from Izzy's.