Jeni's - Strawberry Pretzel Pie

Strawberry Pretzel Pie - Cream Cheese Ice Cream, Pretzel Streusel, and a Whole Lotta Strawberry Sauce

Jeni's released a special flavor last month in collaboration with Dolly Parton called Strawberry Pretzel Pie.  I did manage to get my hands on a pint of it, but it was quite an adventure.  The first online release crashed their website and it took them a week to fix the website and they had an extremely limited supply.  Normally, this is almost good publicity when something like this happens, but Jeni's is a big player in the ice cream business now and I think the frustration level from buyers distracted from what was supposed to be a fun partnership with Dolly which benefitted her Imagination Library.  The flavor is totally sold out now, but my order did go through and I can review it now.  This is a flavor based on strawberry pretzel pie.  I have never had this type of pie, but there are lots of recipes online for it.  The main elements in the recipes are a salted pretzel crust, cream cheese and a strawberry sauce -- all elements which are included in this ice cream flavor.  Let's check it out!

The packaging is nice.  There is a nice drawing of Dolly on the side of the carton.  There is a nice feel-good message on the protective foil when I remove the lid.  Peeling back the foil, I see the creamy white cream cheese base with one of the strawberry swirls prominently displayed on top.  I like it when this happens.  Digging in, the cream cheese base is thick -- I can tell that it is thicker than their usual ice cream.  The cream cheese flavor is mild and does not have the aftertaste that some cream cheeses and cheesecakes have.  That's good.  The strawberry swirl is quite delicious.  It is not too sweet and not too tart.  It does not take a lot of strawberry to fill your mouth with flavor so the cream cheese here serves as a balance to that.  There are quite a bit of sizeable pretzels pieces in here (see pictures below).  Some of these pieces are crunchy, but not all of them.  Mix-ins like this tend to soften up when immersed in ice cream.  On the whole, this is quite delicious.

This is a solid strawberrys and pretzels pint from Jeni's.  I liked it quite a bit, but I did not love it as much as their previous two 'special batch' flavors this year - White House Chocolate Chip and Everything Bagel.  I think I would have loved it more if all the pretzel pieces were crunchy.  But I know keeping pretzels crunchy in ice cream is a hard problem and you cannot fall back on coating them with chocolate in this recipe.  Maybe the expectations for this 'special batch' and all the trouble involved in ordering it raised my expectations too high.  It's still a very enjoyable pint!  I would say to check it out, but I don't know when or if this flavor will be available again.  Some of those strawberry pretzel pie recipes look fun, though.  So you could try that.