Van Leeuwen - Brooklyn Brown Sugar Chunk

Brooklyn Brown Sugar Chunk - Muscovado Brown Sugar Ice Cream with Cookie Dough Bites, Candied Walnuts and Fudge Brownie Pieces

I found that Kowalski's on Grand carries Van Leeuwen Ice Cream.  This is a Brooklyn-based brand that I often have when I visit my sister in New York City.  I believe I had found a pint at Tim & Tom's Speedy Market in Saint Anthony Park a while back (see review here) but I have not seen any there recently.  It's good to know there is a place nearby where I can sample this interesting brand.  The flavor for today is called Brooklyn Brown Sugar Chunk.  It is a muscovado brown sugar base with a lot of mix-ins: cookie dough, brownies & candied walnuts.  I had not heard of muscovado brown sugar before.  I guess the word comes from the Spanish/Portuguese words mascabado/mascavado which mean lessened or diminished.  What it means for brown sugar is that it is not completely refined, so it has more of a molasses flavor than normal brown sugar would.

On to the ice cream!  Removing the lid, the brown sugar base has a light tan color which is consistent with brown sugar.  It is a light color but a browner hue than a light caramel, but not as brown of a hue as a light coffee.  I do not see much for mix-ins just yet.  Digging my spoon in, the base is thick and creamy.  I read an article recently saying that what makes Van Leeuwen bases different from other brands is that they use more egg yolks than anyone else.  So, it creates a custard-like texture.  This particular pint does not have quite as much of a mousse-like textire as the previous pint that I had but it is still easy to scoop.  The brown sugar flavor is good but mild.  I guess I taste a bit of molasses in there, but I believe the point of the base here is to be a vehicle for the mix-ins and not have its own flavor stand out too much.  The first mix-in I encounter is the cookie dough.  It is a small nugget of chewy dough (no chips) and it is pretty good.  Next I found one of the candied walnuts.  These are crunchy, sweet and quite tasty.  Not as thick of a candy coating as a praline pecan but the coating was definitely noticeable.  The walnuts appear to be peeled as I did not notice any of the bitterness that can come with walnut skins.  On a subsequent scoop, I found some of the brownie.  These brownies are swirled a bit, so they form a thick and gooey ribbon of chocolate rather than a chunks that you bite into.  The chocolate was tasty here, but it doesn't stick out texturally as much as some other brownie mix-ins do.  Eating my way down the bottom of the pint, I think I noticed more walnuts than the other two.  I did not mind that as that was my favorite of the mix-ins.

This is a fun flavor from Van Leeuwen.  The brown sugar base was quite good and the mix-ins were well distrubuted throughout the pint.  Sometimes pints with too many mix-ins can feel a bit overloaded and the flavors blend together too much.  Here, they dial back a bit on the mix-in density a bit and let you enjoy each type one at a time.  So, it's not the densest of pints mix-in-wise but it is a good mix.  I especially liked the candied walnuts.