Lapperts - Hana Road

Hana Road - Chocolate Ice Cream with Marshmallows, Walnuts, Macadamia Nuts, and Chocolate-Covered Almonds

The fourth pint of my six pint shipment from Lappert's Ice Cream is called Hana Road.  This is basically their implementation of "Rocky Road", but the flavor is given a more Hawaiian feel by the inclusion of macadamia nuts and invoking the famous "Road to Hana" along the northern coast of Maui.  This should be fun.

Opening the pint, the base chocolate is quite dark.  Digging in, the chocolate base tastes a bit like a fudgesicle.  I remember thinking the same thing about a McConnell's pint a while back.  Most chocolate bases have a frozen-chocolate-milk feel, but this is a bit thicker and deeper chocolate than that.  The marshmallows are the same size and shape as the mini-marshmallows that you can buy in a bag, but they are a bit higher quality than that.  They   The nuts are generously mixed in and provided quite a bit of crunch.  With three different kinds of nuts in the mix, I never really knew which one to expect.  It kept me on my toes.

This turned out to be a fairly standard implementation of Rocky Road.  Yes, there was macadamias in there but their presence was diluted by the other nuts.  My favorite Rocky Road is still Haagen-Dazs because of the superior marshmallow mix-ins but for those that like a darker chocolate base and a more exotic mix of nuts, this is pretty good, too.

Lapperts - Kauai Pie

Kauai Pie - Kona Coffee Ice Cream, Hawaiian Macadamia Nuts, shredded and lightly toasted coconut, and rich dark chocolate fudge

Today we look at the second pint in my recent shipment from Lappert's Ice Cream, the Northern California brand with the tropical Hawaiian connection.   Today's flavor is called Kauai Pie.  Kauai is fourth largest Hawaiian island (behind the big island of Hawaii, Maui and Oahu) and is located northwest of Oahu.  It was in the town of Hanapepe on the island of Kauai where Walter Lappert founded his ice cream company back in 1984.  This flavor contains coffee, chocolate, coconut and macadamia nuts.  Macadamia nuts are a new ingredient for me.  Indigenous to Australia, the macadamia is not produced in many places across the world from South Africa to Brazil to California.  They were introduced to Hawaii in the late 1800s and Hawaii is now particularly famous for them.  They are higher in fat and lower in protein than other nuts, but they are known for their sweet, rich flavor.  The combination of all of the flavors in this pint sounds pretty decadent.  I can't wait to dig in.

The top of the pint shows a rich brown coffee base, some macadamia nut pieces and lots of chocolate.  This looks incredibly rich and I haven't even picked up my spoon yet.  Digging in, the coffee ice cream is a dark roast of Kona coffee and is quite flavorful.  The chocolate fudge swirl is quite strong and has the biting flavor of a chocolate syrup.  The macadamia nuts are crunchy and there are quite a lot of them.  The coconut was something I picked up as a texture first -- there are a lot of 'strings' of coconut present.  It took a while for me to toast the coconut itself simply because the other flavors were so strong.  There are a lot of coconut chocolate and nut (usually almond) flavor around and I am a bit sucker for almost all of them but this one turns it up a notch by also including coffee.  This is extremely delicious.

This is an amazing pint of ice cream.  This flavor alone almost justifies my entire six-pint shipment.  The coffee, chocolate and macadamia go extremely well together and although the coconut plays more of a supporting role here it adds to the overall richness of the pint.  Don't eat a big dinner before having this so that you can fully indulge.