OddFellows - Host of Cupcakes

Host of Cupcakes - Chocolate-Infused Sweet Cream Base with Chunks of Homemade Chocolate Cake and a Liquid-Nitrogen Frozen Whipped Cream

 

Today is the fifth flavor in my recent six-pint "Bodega Capsule" shipment from OddFellow's Ice Cream in Brooklyn.  See my first review in this shipment for more details on this collection of flavors.  A note to local readers that I bought these pints online and they are not available in local grocery stores.  Today's flavor is called Host of Cupcakes which is a pun on "Hostess CupCake" which is often found being sold in a bodega.  The base is a chocolate-infused sweet cream and the mix-ins are chocolate cake pieces and liquid-nitrogen frozen whipped cream.  I am curious as to what makes "chocolate-infused sweet cream" different from simply "chocolate" and I am also curious about the liquid-nitrogen frozen whipped cream.  I have had a cupcake-themed flavor before from Coolhaus, but that was a white-cake cupcake and this flavor is chocolate.  Let's check it out!

Removing the lid, the base ice cream has a light brown color -- lighter than the usual chocolate color.  Digging in, I can taste the chocolate for sure, but I can tell what they mean by "chocolate-inflused sweet cream".  It reminds me a bit of the 'chocolate cookie milk' bases that I see occasionally (for example see this Coolhaus pint).  I suppose this is probably 'chocolate cupcake milk'.  Perhaps they soaked the cream in cupcake pieces for a while and then strained them out before chilling and churning?  Anyhow, although it is mild by design, it is still quite delicious.  Soon, I encounter the mix-ins.  The cupcake pieces are quite small -- they are a bit hard to see in my photos below -- but they are soft and chocolatey when I do bit into one.  The whipped cream sections are interesting.  They are small and taste like whipped cream (probably because they are!).  They are not super-cold or anything so I suspect the deal with the liquid nitrogen was a way to fold them into the base without mixing them into the base.  It worked!  There are small pockets of whipped cream which are not blended into the base.

This is a fun and interesting Hostess CupCake-themed pint from OddFellows Ice Cream.  It is a bit more subtle and nuanced than I expected -- mild chocolate-infused base which small tastefully added mix-ins -- but still quite tasty.

 

 

 

 

Coolhaus - Hey!! Cupcake

Hey!! Cupcake - Vanilla Frosting Ice Cream with Rainbow Sprinkles and Cupcake Bites

Greetings!  I have reached the end of my shipment from the Culver-City based Coolhaus Ice Cream.  The sixth and final pint of the shipment is called Hey!! Cupcake.  The cupcakes here are based on a sheet cake with vanilla frosting and rainbow sprinkles.  Looks sort of similar to a McConnell's flavor that I had a while back.  It should be interesting to compare and contrast those two flavors.  As with all the flavors in this Coolhaus shipment, I should point out that I ordered these pints online because they are not available near me in Minnesota.  You may find them in other cities (or if you also order from Coolhaus online) but I have not found them in the Twin Cities area yet.

On to the ice cream!  Removing the lid, I am created by a cool emoji.  This emoji is called "Person Raising Both Hands in Celebration" has been part of the unicode standard since 2010.  I always thought this emoji was giving me a double-high-five, but I guess it is just celebrating.  Peeling back the foil, I see the bright white color of the vanilla frosting base with quite a bit of colorful sprinkles on one side of the top.  The color has bled away from the sprinkles a bit and into the surrounding base.  It looks rather neat.  The ice cream appears softer than usual and it is.  I think it is the frosting mixed into the base.  It is not nearly as soft as the Aunt Gladys Yellow Cake Batter flavor which had alcohol in it to lower its freezing point, but it is definitely softer than the usual Coolhaus pint.  Digging in, the base tastes good but it is also quite sweet.  I can definitely taste the frosting in the mix.  The cupcake bites are quite good.  They are little cupcake nuggets which are chewy and provide a good contrast with the base.  The sprinkles add mostly color to the mix -- it is a beautiful looking pint -- but occasionally I noticed some extra sweetness from biting into one.

This is a fun sprinkle-cupcake-themed flavor from Coolhaus.  In the battle of the sprinkle-cake flavors I think I liked McConnell's a bit better.  The difference is that this pint is definitely sweeter.  You could easily get a sugar high from all the frosting that is blended into the base.  McConnell's on the other hand somehow put in enough buttercream to keep the sugar from getting to be too much.  They are both Southern California brands so if you live in that part of the country you could try both flavors and compare them for yourself.

Museum of Ice Cream - Piñata

Piñata - Vanilla Ice Cream with Iced Animal Cookies, Frosted Cupcake Bites, Fizzy Cotton Candies, and Rainbow Sprinkles

Today we try another pint from the Museum of Ice Cream.  They're the brand that started off with interactive exhibits which has now partnered with Target to release seven flavors available in pints.  The first flavor was reviewed here.  Today's flavor is a bit more daring, it is called Piñata and features with all sorts of sugary mix-ins: frosted animal cookies, cupcake bites, cotton candy and sprinkles.

We all remember piñatas from childhood birthday parties but they have a long and storied history.  They date back as far as the 14th century where Christians would decorate an earthenware pot on the first Sunday of Lent.  The Spanish name piñata (or pignatta in Italian) came from the fact that the shape of the pot resembled a pine code.  They brought this custom to the New World only to find that the Aztecs and Mayans had similar customs for different events.  The practice of knocking open a piñata while blindfolded comes from the Mayans.  What does it mean to have a piñata-themed ice cream flavor?  It looks like the idea is to dig into vanilla ice cream until all these sugary mix-ins come out.  Let's see how this turns out.

Opening the pint, a few of the mix-ins are visible on top of the vanilla ice cream right away.  The mix-ins themselves are small in size and dispersed generously throughout the pint.  They are all very sweet.  They were pretty good, but with the exception of the animal cookies, I had trouble telling them apart.  With the animal cookies, I could tell it was a frosted animal cracker, but all of the rest tasted like little crumbly-crunchy bits of sugar -- not unlike the the type of hard frosting which is on the tops of decorative cakes.  This often happens with these types of 'kitchen sink' types of flavors --  I will be at first be a bit wowed by the litany of ingredients listed on the side of the carton but then  there enough of each ingredient for the flavor of any of them to stick out and then it all blends together in your mouth anyways.  The vanilla base played a supporting role here and served as an adequate vehicle for it all.

A piñata theme is a fun an imaginative idea for an ice cream flavor.  It is an extremely sweet flavor -- all of the mix-ins were very sugary -- so be prepared for that.  As mentioned above a lot of the mix-ins blended together, but if you have a sweet tooth and are in the mood for sprinkles and candied frosting pieces then this is a fun and youthful flavor.