Pumphouse - Black Garlic

Black Garlic - Black Garlic-flavored Ice Cream

The Pumphouse Creamery in South Minneapolis is getting very creative this winter.  Yes, you are reading the blogpost title correctly:  Black Garlic ice cream.  Since I eat so many different kinds of ice creams, I do feel like I have to sample the weird and unusual ones.  This is indeed my first garlic ice cream.  Garlic is an Old World plant which is related to the onion, shallot and leek and is known for its pungent flavor.  Black Garlic is garlic which has been heated and aged so that undergoes the Maillard reaction giving it a more a more complex, but muted flavor.  If you have Facebook, the Pumphouse account does have a photo with the ice cream, some of the black garlic bulbs and a short blurb about the flavor.  (I hope I linked that correctly).

On to the ice cream!  Removing the lid, the base ice cream has light beige color -- perhaps a bit more taupe than the usual caramel color.  I can see a few black dots in the mix as well which may be ground up pieces of the black garlic.  I brace myself as I dig my spoon in, but upon tasting it's fairly mild.  I can tell that it is not vanilla, but it does not have a super strong flavor.  Only after swallowing do a notice the garlic flavoring.  Although I can see the black specks, they do not provide any textural or specific flavoring in themselves.  They remind me of the bean specks in a vanilla bean flavor.  Being in the mix provides flavor to the base but otherwise they just blend in.  Since the garlic flavor is not very intense, I have no problems eating the whole pint in one sitting.  Using black garlic instead of white garlic I think is the key here.  About a half hour after finishing, I did have a lingering taste in my mouth and

This is a very interesting and unique pint of ice cream.  I never would have guessed that garlic could be put into an ice cream.  On one hand, it is so carefully and tastefully done so as to make the ice cream palatable.  On the other hand, muting the flavor this much begs the question as to whether it brings me joy when I eat it.  So, yes I ate it, it was not that bad and I get to add a 'garlic' tag to the block of label tags on the right, but when would I eat this again.  Would a savory ice cream go with a savory pie (Shepherd's Pie?).  I don't know.  I do applaud the experimentation though.