Graeter's - 150th Birthday Cake

150th Birthday Cake - Cake Batter Ice Cream with Cake Pieces and Sprinkles

Graeter's Ice Cream of Cincinnati is turning 150 this year!  I was able to find six flavors which I had not reviewed before so I pulled the trigger on an online shipment.  This first flavor is called 150th Birthday Cake.  Looking at that weblink tells me that the flavor might actually be called "Birthday Cake", but the "150th" is displayed so prominently on the packaging that I'll leave it in.  150 years is a long time!  Dating back to 1870, Graeter's is the oldest ice cream company in my rotation.  It is hard to describe how long ago that was.  There were only thirty-seven states -- the Civil War had recently ended.  Ulysses Grant was president.  There was no major league baseball yet, but the first all-professional team played in Cincinnati the year before.  150 years later and the brand is still being run by the Graeter family.  You can read more about the history of Graeter's on their website.  This birthday cake flavor appears to be an implementation of a "sheet cake" flavor -- similar to other flavors such as McConnell's Sprinkle Cake, Coolhaus's Hey!! Cupcake and old short-release flavors from Ample Hills & Ben & Jerry's.  This is a cake batter ice cream with cake pieces and sprinkles.  Let's check it out!

Removing the lid, I see colorful sprinkles right away!  The base has an off-white color to it.  Digging in, the ice cream is expectedly sweet, but not overly so.  Unlike many 'sheet cake' flavors, there is no frosting in the mix here and frosting can sometimes (but not always) be a source of excessive sweetness.  The base is described as a 'cake batter' flavor.  There is a bit of yellow color, so I don't think it's a white cake batter, but it is not so yellow as to be a yellow cake.  I think it's more like white cake but they have not removed all the egg yolks from the mix, hence the off-white color.  The sprinkles are good.  They are the crunchy cake sprinkles and not the softer sprinkles that you often find on cupcakes and donuts. The cake pieces are distributed throughout the pint.  They are small in size, but are soft, chewy (that is, not frozen).

This is a delicious birthday cake flavor from Graeter's.  It does indeed taste like a good piece of birthday cake that you might have at someone's party.  This is one of the better implementations that I have had.  I don't think it is quite as good as McConnell's but that is perhaps setting the bar too high.  If you see this pint and are in the mood for celebrating Graeter's sesquicentennial birthday, then give this a try.