Bebe Zito - Berry Queen

 

Berry Queen - Black Raspberries, Blueberries, with Strawberry Cookies. Topped with Strawberry Cookie Crumble and Snozzberries Sauce
 

Today's flavor comes from Bebe Zito scoop shop that opened this year in the Lowry Hill/Wedge neighborhood of Minneapolis.  This one is called Berry Queen.  It looks like a berry blend.  Black raspberries and blueberries in the base and strawberry cookie mix-ins.  The flavor page also mentions snozzberries which is a Roald Dahl/Willie Wonka joke.  In the 1971 movie, Veruca Salt argues that there is no such thing as snozzberries, but Willie (Gene Wilder) assures her that they do and that they "taste like snozzberries".  Googling gets me other theories based on other more mature Roald Dahl books, but that's beyond the scope of this blog.  This looks like a 'berry blend' ice cream which I have had with Izzy's Church Elderberry and Four Berry flavors and Jeni's Wildberry Lavender which include orange in the mix.  Let's check it out!

After removing the lid, the top of the pint has a list pink color with a few dark specks in it.  The first spoonful is very berry as expected.  I can specifically taste the black raspberry the most, but I do taste some blue berry as well.  The ice cream has a bit of bit of a gritty texture to it.  It looks like the strawberry cookies have been crushed into fine crumbs which are dispersed evenly throughout the ice cream.  Focusing in, I believe they do add a little bit of strawberry flavor into the mix, but honestly one on the fun parts of a berry blend flavor is how the individual flavors get lost and you end up with a big mouthful of berry-ness.  It is quite delicious!

This is a fun and appealing blended berry flavor from Bebe Zito.  It's hard to compare it directly to other berry blends because they are all a little different in their ingredient rations, so I will just tell you want sticks out as different here.  I believe black raspberry is the largest contributor to the over all blend and the cookie mix-ins are crushed into crumbs creating almost a homogenous blend with a gritty texture.  If you are in a berry mood, give this one a try.

 

 

Talenti - Black Raspberry Vanilla Parfait

Black Raspberry Vanilla Parfait - Layers of Black Raspberry Gelato, Oat Crisps, Blueberry Sauce, Vanilla Gelato, and a Second Layer of Oat Crisps

Talenti has a new line of flavors for 2019.  They have introduced a new set of Gelato Layers pints.  They stack layers of gelato, sauce and mix-ins into a single pint.  I've seen pints like this before.  Häagen-Dazs has their "Trio" flavors where layers of crunchy Belgian chocolate separate two different base ice cream.  Tillamook also does this with a few of their pints (for example, Chocolate Covered Strawberry).  With Talenti, they generally have five layers per flavor and each layer is either a gelato, a sauce or a crunchy mix-in.  This particular pint is called Black Raspberry Vanilla Parfait.   Looking at the rest of the 'layers' pints, this is the only flavor which does not contain chocolate. 

This is the second "parfait" flavor in a row (see previous review)!  If I had only seen one in isolation, I would have chalked it up to typical Peterman-catalogue-type branding (I know 'parfait' means 'perfect' in French), but then I remembered the Peanut Buster Parfaits that were available at Dairy Queen when I was a kid and figured it must mean something more specific.  Sure enough, a parfait is a dessert which usually features layered fruit and cream flavors and is served in a tall clear glass.

The layers here are:

1. Black Raspberry Gelato
2. Oat Crisps
3. Blueberry Sauce
4. Vanilla Gelato
5. Oat Crisps (again)

Since Talenti uses clear jars, you can actually see all the layers from the outside!  This should be fun.  Let's check it out!

Unscrewing the lid, all I see is the very light pink color of the black raspberry gelato on top.  The other four layers are buried.  Hmm... taking pictures of this flavor is going to be more challenging than usual.    I got out a sharp knife and tried to cut out a pie-shaped wedge that went all the way down to the bottom.  The results are below.  It's not perfect, but you get the idea.  Once I got the pictures I wanted I finally tasted it.  The black raspberry base is fairly mild but quite tasty.  You don't have to dig too far to run into the blueberry sauce and the first layer of oat crisps.  The blueberry sauce is good and blends well with the raspberry.  The oat crisps were small oatmeal nuggets.  They had the same shape and consistency of oyster crackers except they had the flavor of an oatmeal pie crust.  There weren't as many of these as I expected but the provided good crunchy texture.  Below the blueberry sauce and oat crisps was vanilla gelato.  This second layer served as a palate cleanser to keep things from getting too fruity.  Then at the bottom was a second layer of oat crisps.  Again not as many as I expected but still fun and crunchy when I got some on my spoon.  I guess the idea is to split up the oatmeal layers to prevent a 'dry layer' in the pint.

How did it all come together?  This pint actually came together pretty well.  The pint jar is small enough that I did not have to dig too much to encounter all the flavors.  Everything mixed surprisingly well.  I never felt like I was stuck eating consecutive spoons of just one flavor.  I guess the gelato and sauce was not too hard and it facilitated the mixing.  So, I liked this pint quite a bit.  Could this have been done just as well by swirling instead of vertical layers?  Perhaps.  But the layers did not present too much of an obstacle.  I'm sure people will have different strategies when eating these pints.  Should one mix with the spoon first?  I didn't but I'm sure some people will.  Another issue is trying to split the pint into multiple servings.  I ate the pint by myself in one sitting but not everyone does that.  It might be tricky to share this pint, or to eat only half and come back later.  Not a problem for me, though.  This pint gets a thumbs up from me.  Six more layered flavors to try!  I'll be curious to see how the layering works with thicker mix-ins like chocolate or peanut butter.

Pumphouse Creamery - Black Raspberry Crisp

Black Raspberry Crisp - Vanilla Ice Cream with Black Raspberry Jam and Oatmeal Crisp

Today we return to the Minneapolis-based Pumphouse Creamery for another pint.  They have a new flavor for the new year called Black Raspberry Crisp.  It appears to be a berry-pie-a-la-mode flavor.  It looked really good in the scoop shop tubs, so I picked it up.

Opening the pint, I see a lot of beautiful things.  An off-white vanilla base provides the backdrop, there are dark sections of black raspberry jam, lighter sections where the jam has bled into the vanilla and I can see a lot of small little pieces of the oatmeal.  I haven't even dug my spoon in yet!  Digging in, the raspberry jam is quite good.  It is not too sweet and not too tart.  The vanilla ice cream goes very well with it.  The oatmeal crisp ends up being crunchy nuggets that you encounter from time to time.  The mix is quite good, there was a little bit of everything in almost every spoonful.

This is an excellent pint of ice cream and one of my favorites from Pumphouse Creamery.  It reminded me a bit of Jeni's Brambleberry Crisp except it was a different type of berry.  That's quite a compliment as that is one of Jeni's most successful and popular flavors.  Fans of pie-a-la-mode ice creams will be in for a treat when they try this.

Talenti - Black Raspberry Chocolate Chip

  

Black Raspberry Chocolate Chip - Black Raspberry Gelato with Chocolate Chips

We return to the Talenti brand for a review of their Black Raspberry Chocolate Chip flavor gelato.  I was specifically recommended this pint by a friend several months ago and I'm just now getting around to it.

Unscrewing the lid shows the purplish color of the black raspberry with a few chocolate chips showing.  I also see some roundness to the surface on the top which is more common with gelato than with ice cream.  The first spoonful had plenty of black raspberry flavor.  I like black raspberry.  Sometimes red raspberry is too tart but that is never a problem with black raspberry.   Sometimes I almost think I'm eating blueberry.  The chocolate flavor in the chips is noticeable right away.  The chips are of the small flake variety and they are dispersed evenly throughout the pint.  The gelato itself is soft, but it's still a bit creamy.  Fruit flavors fair well in the softer gelato framework.

I enjoyed this pint.  Black raspberry and chocolate chip is a popular combination.  If a softer gelato version interests you then this Talenti pint is the one to try.  If a harder, thicker ice cream interests you than this one of Graeter's signature flavors.

Graeter's - Black Raspberry Chocolate Chip

Black Raspberry Chocolate Chip - Black Raspberry Ice Cream with Chocolate Chips

Today's review is new brand for me - Graeter's.   Graeter's is a family-run business based in Cincinnati which has been around for four generations now.  Originally started by Louis Graeter in 1870 and was later joined in the business by his wife Regina.  When Louis died in a streetcar accident in 1919, Regina took over and expanded it into the business that it is today.  Regina lived into the 1950s and although technological advances in her lifetime had made ice cream manufacturing easier than it was in the 19th century, Regina clung to the old-fashioned "french pot" process.  Today, her great-grandchildren now run the company but they still use the "french pot" process at Graeter's.

What is the "french pot" process?   They describe it online in one of their many youtube videos.  It's similar to how one would try to make their own ice cream at home.  The milk, cream, sugar and flavoring is put into a cold pot which is then mixed until it thickens.  In the 19th century, this was done partly for practical purposes.  Before refrigeration, the pot was made cold by being placed in a larger pot of ice.  Modern freezers now allow for ice cream manufacturing machine which produce large batches of ice cream but Graeter's still uses these small "french pots" and are limited to batches of just two and a half gallons each which they still hand-pack into the pints.

How does this process affect the ice cream?  Let's see!  Removing the lid shows a thick ice cream of purple color of the black raspberry base.  You can actually see the effects of the hand packing right away as the swipe of the scoop has left the top a bit like frozen slush on one side.  Digging into the pint, the ice cream is very thick -- not a lot of air gets injected in during the "french pot" process.  The frozen slush section on one side of the top was not ideal, but it did give a certain "homemade" feeling to the ice cream.  Only small pockets of it were found later on in the pint.  The black raspberry flavor was delicious.  Red raspberry can be a bit tart sometimes but the black raspberry provided the berry flavor without a hint of that.  The chocolate chunks were dispersed throughout the pint,  They were uniquely shaped, each was a bit large for a chocolate chip -- they were like crushed up chocolate bars.  The chocolate went well with the raspberry.

All in all a successful pint.  I enjoyed checking out a new brand -- especially one made with a unique process.  It really is a thicker ice cream than other brands.  The frozen slush sections are a bit of a concern but not a dealbreaker.  I have another Graeter's flavor in my freezer so I'll be able to report if that is a common occurrence or just an aberration.    If you are interested in checking out a unique ice cream in a classic berry & chocolate combination -- and you can find a pint of it -- then you should check this out.

UPDATE -- I have had this flavor a couple of times since I first wrote this review and it has always been amazing.  The slush issue must have been a fluke issue in transit or at the supermarket.  I have never seen it again in the dozens of other Graeter's pints that I have tried either  That the fluke happened on my very first Graeter's pint is frustrating in retrospect.  I know now that this is the top flavor from one of the top brands in the country, but I did not know when I was first trying this out.  So, do not fear.  Enjoy this flavor!