Sweet Science - Peanut Butter Pretzel

Peanut Butter Pretzel - Salted Peanut Butter Ice Cream with Chocolate-Covered Pretzels and Chewy Dark Chocolate Ganache Squares

Today we cover the fourth and final of the "State Fair" flavors from the Saint-Paul-based Sweet Science Ice Cream.  This flavor is called Peanut Butter Pretzel (instagram link here).  It's a peanut butter base which chocolate-covered pretzels and dark chocolate ganache.  Whenever I think of this flavor combination, I immediately think of Ben & Jerry's famous Chubby Hubby flavor.  That's actually a vanilla-malt base with peanut butter swirls.  Here, the base is peanut butter.  Checking my archive for similar flavors I see pints from Talenti and the Museum of Ice Cream.  Let's check it out.

Removing the lid shows a lot going on.  I see quite a few mix-ins right away in the light-colored peanut butter base.  I see sizable chunks of chocolate ganache and some smaller chunks of what are probably chocolate-covered pretzels.  I also see a few small strip-like chunks of peanut butter.  That's an unexpected bonus!  I figured the peanut butter would only be in the base, but it appears there are also some small swirls of peanut butter in the mix as well.  Digging in, I like the peanut butter flavor of the a little mild, but extra flavor is delivered by the peanut butter swirls.  The chocolate-covered pretzels are not as crunchy or as numerous as I expected, but they are tasty and insert a bit of salt into the mix as well.  I've seen the chocolate ganache squares in other Sweet Science flavors (here and here).  These are soft, but chewy squares of chocolate rather than a thick sauce.  It is quite tasty and it goes very well wit the peanut butter.

I enjoyed this Peanut Butter Pretzel flavor from Sweet Science quite a bit.  It was not as pretzel-ly as I was expecting, but the excellent peanut butter base/swirls and chocolate ganache more than makes up for that.  For a more pretzel-heavy implementation, I'd go with Talenti, but otherwise, you can't go wrong here.

This completes the State Fair from Sweet Science.  This was problem the one that could slide into the main menu the easiest -- the other three had a bit of a fair-food novelty slant to it.  My favorite of the four flavors was Tipsy Cherry Pie, the mini-pie pieces with tangy wine-cherry filling and excellent crust worked really well as a mix-in.  Today's flavor was my second favorite.  I enjoyed the other two (Caramel Caramel Corn and Animal Circus) but I think they'd work better at the fair where you are more inclined to embrace quirky fair-food ingredients.