Alden's - Moose Tracks

Moose Tracks - Vanilla Ice Cream with Peanut Butter Cups and Famous Moose Tracks Fudge

Today I return to Alden's Ice Cream, the premium Oregon brand that you can find locally at both Lunds and Target.  I have had this brand once before and had issues with the texture -- it was as if the pint had been partially thawed and refrozen.  That stuff can happen -- often times it can be a fluke issue at the grocery store and no fault of the brand -- but it is awkward when it happens on the very first pint that you try of that brand.  So, I'm getting around to trying another pint.  This flavor is called Moose Tracks and consists of a vanilla base with a fudge swirl and peanut butter cups.  Today I learned that Moose Tracks itself is a brand-name of Denali Flavors.  Looking at their history page, they developed the fudge in 1988 and it is named after a miniature golf course on Michigan's Upper Peninsula.  I looked to see what makes this fudge different from other fudges and could find a lot of specific details -- just that it's a salted dark chocolate.  In addition to Alden's, several brands have licensed the use of Moose Tracks fudge in their ice creams.  It looks like the standard formulation for the basic Moose Tracks flavor matches this one (vanilla base with peanut butter cups).

On to the ice cream!  Removing the lid, I see a nice marbling of the fudge swirl against the vanilla base.  Digging in, the texture is good!  The weird refrozen texture I saw in my first Alden's pint is nowhere to be seen.  That is a relief -- although it does make me want to re-try that first pint.  Digging in, the moose tracks swirl is chocolatey as expected.  Parts of it are half-mixed into the base.  It does have a bit of a salted dark chocolate flavor as billed above, but it is not as strong as I expected.  As I eat more, I encounter some peanut butter cups.  I took an extra picture below.  These provide more chocolate flavor than peanut butter, but I do get a little burst of peanut butter when I bite into one.  The vanilla base is decent and mainly serves as a vehicle for the swirl and the peanut butter cups here.

This is a decent pint from Alden's.  The Moose Tracks swirl is alright.  It seems to be a way of delivering a marbled swirl of salted chocolate which is different from a chocolate base or chocolate mix-ins.  It was not as intense as I expected.  It tasted good, but I have had thicker fudge swirls, ganaches, and chunky chocolate mix-ins.  Perhaps my expectations were raised too high because how famous the Moose Tracks name is.  My favorite vanilla-with-chocolate-and-peanut-butter-mix-ins flavor is Ample Hills' PB Wins the Cup.  That's mainly a New York brand, though.  For a national brand, I'd go for the Talenti Gelato Layers flavor Peanut Butter Vanilla Fudge.