Van Leeuwen - Royal Wedding Cake

Royal Wedding Cake - Cream Cheese Ice Cream with Chunks of Lemon Sponge Cake and Layers of Elderflower Frosting

 

The second flavor from my recent shipment from the Brooklyn-based Van Leeuwen Ice Cream -- a shipment which included their Macaroni & Cheese flavor is called Royal Wedding Cake.  I bought it online so it is not available in Minnesota grocery stores.  This is a classic cake-based flavor.  Wedding-cake flavors are usually a little fancier than birthday-cake flavors and this follows that pattern.  Instead of simple yellow or white cake pieces, it has lemon sponge cake.  Instead of a simple buttercream frosting, it has elderflower frosting.  I have had a wedding cake flavor once before from Jeni's earlier this year.  Izzy's had a couple of flavors from their scoop shop days which have had similar ingredients.  They included elderflower in their Swedish Garden Party flavor (which I mentioned at the time was used in Harry & Megan's wedding cake) and Lemon Sponge Cake was one of their Flavor Award winners.  Also, Ben & Jerry's had a limited batch flavor a few years ago called Cake My Day which felt more like a wedding cake than a birthday cake.  OK, let's see how Van Leeuwen's flavor turns out!

Removing the lid and peeling back the protective seal, I see that the cream cheese base has a golden white color to it.  Digging in, I can taste the cream cheese base is a bit thicker than the normal base but it does have have that distinctive cream cheese aftertaste that you sometimes have.  Quickly, I encounter the lemon cake pieces.  These are excellent and there are so many of them then they almost feel like they are half-blended into the base.  The elderflower frosting has a nice flavor to it -- a bit berry-like in flavor but milder and more fragrant.  Overall, the taste is quite good.  It really does taste like a slice of wedding cake.

This is excellent ice cream!  A wedding cake flavor is a simple idea, but this is implemented very well.  It's all about the balance of the ingredients and I love the blend between the lemon and the elderflower here.  The flavor was refined enough that I felt like I should eat it with cloth napkins.  One of my personal favorites from Van Leeuwen so far.  Check it out if you have access to it.

 

 

 

Izzy's - Swedish Garden Party

Swedish Garden Party - Elderflower based ice cream with raspberry swirl and crumbled ginger snap cookies

The flavor of the day is from the Saint Paul-based Izzy's Ice Cream.  It is called Swedish Garden Party.  I have have recently decided to get hand-packed pints of Izzy's most interesting flavors.  I did this because I found I had been reviewing more pints from other local brands such as Sweet Science, Milkjam or even Pumphouse because not enough of Izzy's most interesting flavors come pre-packaged in pint form.  Today's flavor is not one of their People's Flavor Winners, but it looks quite interesting nonetheless.  It is an elderflower ice cream with a raspberry swirl and has ginger snap pieces as the mix-in.  Looks good.  The fact that I am 25% Swedish sealed the deal for me, so I picked it up.  Izzy's originally made this flavor for American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis.

Opening the pint, the base ice cream is quite light in color.  The elderflower and raspberry don't add much color.  We've seen this before in the Raspberry Little Italy pint.  It is a light-colored raspberry.  Digging in, I immediately taste the raspberry.  It has a delicious flavor and is slightly tart.  I have never had elderflower in an ice cream before and I was curious as to what it would taste like.  Elderflower has been in the news recently as it was the flavor of choice for Prince Harry & Meghan Markle's wedding cake.  From that linked article, I read that expect a sweet and floral flavor.  Here, I mainly taste raspberry, but perhaps the elderflower blends into the mix in ways that I don't fully understand.  It is a different raspberry flavor than what is found in that Raspberry Little Italy pint.  At any rate, it tastes pretty good.  The ginger snap pieces are generously crumbled throughout the pint. They are soft, chewy and provide a mild dose of ginger.

This is a pretty good pint of ice cream.  The raspberry swirl and ginger snaps tasted good and went well together.  I'd be curious to see how the elderflower tastes when there are not other strong flavors to distract me.  I liked it, but the slight tartness kept me from liking it as much as Raspberry Little Italy.  Of course, people with Swedish ancestry should check this out, too.