Lick - Carrot Cake

Carrot Cake - Cream Cheese Ice Cream with Spiced Carrot Cake Pieces

The third pint in my recent six-pint shipment from the Austin-based Lick Honest Ice Cream is called Carrot Cake.  It was a seasonal flavor for spring.  A note to local readers that I got this shipment in the mail and I am not aware that this brand is available in Twin Cities grocery stores.  Here, pieces of carrot cake are the mix-ins and the base ice cream is cream cheese flavored.  I have had carrot cake-themed pints twice before, once from Sweet Science which has a cream chese base with a carrot ice cream swirl (no 'cake') and one from Izzy's where the flavors are combined differently (spices in the base, cream cheese frosting as a mix-in, plus walnuts).  Let's see how this Lick flavor compares!

Removing the lid, I see quite a lot of cake pieces on the top already.  It looks like the cake has been shredded into fairly small pieces but not so small that you cannot tell that they are cake.  The cream cheese base underneath as an off-white color.  Digging in, I taste the spices of the cake right away.  They use cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves.  Cinnamon has the strongest flavor but I do taste the others.  One of my own spiced-cake recipes calls for cloves which can give a nice 'kick' to the spice flavor and I can definitely taste a bit of that here.  These cake pieces are quite delicious.  The cream cheese base does not have a strong flavor itself, it does not have that distinctive cream-cheese or cheesecake flavor that some cream cheese bases have.  I can tell it is not vanilla, though, and it serves as a good vehicle for delivering the carrot cake pieces.  The texture of the ice cream is interesting.  It is not the softest or airiest ice cream.  It has a bit more texture to it that I normally see.  Also, as I am finishing the pint, I notice that melts into a liquid rather than getting gooey.  I eat fast enough, so it was only a little bit of milky liquid at the end  This does make more clear some instructions that came with the pint.  They told me to scoop out only what I was planning to eat rather than eating out of the pint and then putting the pint back in the freezer.  Not a problem for me -- I ate the pint in one sitting -- but it is a good reminder not to try to refreeze melted ice cream.

This is a solid implementation of a carrot cake from from Lick Ice Cream.  I liked the spicy carrot cake pieces quite a bit and the cream cheese base was a good way of delivering it.  Comparing to the other brands, the ingredients don't line up exactly to make a perfect comparison but this pint did quite well.  I think Sweet Science had smoother and tastier ice creams but there were no cake pieces and it was not as spicy.  Izzy's had more of a complex mixture, cake pieces, spices in the base, cream cheese frosting and nuts.  I liked it quite a bit but I also appreciate the simplicity of this Lick pint.