Sweet Science - Coffee Caramel Cookie

Coffee Caramel Cookie - Five Watt Coffee Ice Cream with a Thick Swirl of Salted Caramel Sauce and Crunchy Clusters of Newman-O's

Sweet Science Ice Cream in Saint Paul is doing curbside pick-up on Friday's while the Keg & Case market is closed.  Their first bundle was four pie-based flavors: Pecan Pie, Lemon Meringue Pie, Berry Crumble and Grasshopper Pie.  I passed on this one because I have already reviewed three of the four flavors.  (I did like them, click the links to read my old reviews.)  The second bundle featured four caramel-base flavors.  There, the only pint I had reviewed was Salted Caramel itself -- quite good especially if you like your salted caramels noticeably salty.  That left three flavors which were new for me, so I picked the trigger on the bundle. 

The first of these pints is called Coffee Caramel Cookie.  It has a coffee base from their Keg & Case neighbor Five Watt Coffee.  The specific coffee used is their Residency Blend.  I reviewed the coffee base itself a year and a half ago.  Mixed into this are a salted caramel sauce -- which I have previously seen in their Salted Caramel Swirl flavor -- and Newman-O's cookies (the all-organic version of Oreos).  Looks look a good combination of flavors.

Opening the lid, I am greeted by a very generous amount of caramel sauce on the top of the pint.  Wow.  The coffee base has a light color for coffee bases and I can see a few pieces of the cookies in there as well.  Digging in, this caramel sauce is delicious!  It is very gooey and noticeably salty.  Since there is so much of it on top, it dominates the flavor of the first few spoonfuls.  As I eat my way down, I notice the mix-ins.  They are crunchy and chocolatey and are variably sized.  It is like they broken up the Newman-O's and then re-aggregated them into different sizes.  One of the clusters was fairly large which was quite fun.  The coffee base takes a backseat to the caramel and cookies, but I am hit with a wave of coffee flavor once in a while so that's good.  The swirls of caramel sauce are not as thick further down as on the way down but I can still taste caramel in every spoonful.

This is a great pint of ice cream!  Sweet Science is a super-premium brand, so you pay a bit more for a pint, but you really get your money's in flavors like this one.  The caramel swirl is my favorite here, the Newman-O's were clustered very well and the coffee base was a good vehicle for it all.  It is a good combination of flavors.  Surprisingly, I haven't had this flavor combination before.  I've had plenty of coffee/chocolate flavors and a few coffee/caramel flavors but not one that includes all three.  This is delicious.