Milkjam Creamery - Uncle Spud

Uncle Spud - French Fry Ice Cream with a Chocolate Covered Potato Chips

 

Today is the first of Milkjam Creamery's September flavors with a State Fair theme (instagram link here).  I have fallen way behind in my write-ups but I did try to forward along instagram links in previous Milkjam reviews.  Anyhow, this flavor is called Uncle Spud (instagram link here).  It is a french-fry-infused base with chocolate covered potato chip clusters.  I have had a french fry based flavor once before from Coolhaus (it turned out to be shoestring potatoes) and I have had potato chips a few times from Ben & Jerry's recent Chip Happens (the old Late Night Snack predates this blog) and a couple of flavors from Ample Hills, most notably their Commodore flavor.  Let's see how Milkjam Creamery compares.

Removing the lid, the base has an off-white cream color to it and I can see a couple of chunks of chocolate which I presume are the chocoalte-covered potato chips.  Digging in, the chocolate covered potato chips are excellent.  Crunchy potato chips and the salt that they deliver make for excellent ice cream mix-ins.  The challenge is usually trying to keep them crunchy in the pint (it is a bit easier in the scoop shop when you can mix it in right before you eat it.  The solution to keeping the potato chips crispy is often to coat them in chocolate.  It succeeds quite well here!  The base ice cream is said to be 'french fry infused'.  I can indeed taste a bit of starchy potato flavor in this base and that does go well with the potato chip mix-ins.  But 'infused' means that the fries themselves have been strained out before the final churn and freeze.  Just setting expectations here for what is billed as the 'french fry' flavor.  It's understandable that french fries themselves would likely get too soggy in the cream (unless they were coated with chocolate or something).

This is a very delicious pint from Milkjam.  It is perhaps misleading that this gets billed as the 'french fry' pint when the base is only 'infused' with the flavor of french fries.  But I still must recommend this for the excellent chocolate covered potato chip mix-ins.  They are salty, tasty and still very crunchy.  If you love potato chips, check this out.

 

 

 

Ben & Jerry - Chip Happens

Chip Happens - A Cold Mess of Chocolate Ice Cream with Fudge Chips & Crunchy Potato Chip Swirls

Ben & Jerry's has a new flavor!  I was surprised, but I checked their available list of pints and there is was.  It turns out their their Netflix & Chilll'd flavor from earlier this year was not a one-off collaboration with the streaming network.  They are planning multiple flavors based on specific Netflix programs.  I found their page of Netflix flavors here.  This flavor is called Chip Happens and is based on the Netflix show Nailed It! -- the reality show where amateur bakers try to recreate a complex professional desserts.  I have never seen it, but the premise sounds rather amusing.  Anyhow, the artwork on the carton shows a cow-chef holding up a "Limited Botch" sign -- ha ha -- and describes the flavor as a "Cold Mess" with chocolate ice cream and potato chip and fudge chip mix-ins.  I am excited about the potato chips.  I have not seen them from Ben & Jerry's since their retired Late Night Snack flavor -- the Jimmy Fallon flavor from when Jimmy Fallon hosted Late Night instead of the Tonight Show.  Now the Jimmy Fallon flavor is the Tonight Dough and is cookie-dough based instead of potato chip based.

A note to local readers, I bought this pint at the Midway Target in mid-May.  As I type this a week and a half after eating it, I'm not 100% sure if that store is open because of the unrest in the area, but a lot of Target stores have the same stocking patterns so perhaps another Target will have it.  Also, this is not a Target-specific flavor so it will likely show up in other grocery stores with extensive Ben & Jerry selections.

OK, on to the ice cream!  Removing the lid, I see the brown color of the chocolate base with several fudge chips visible right away on top.  Digging in, the chocolate base itself has a muted flavor -- almost as if it is malted.  I have written before about how Ben & Jerry's has much better chocolate mix-ins (chips, chunks and brownies) than their chocolate base and that is true here.  The fudge chips here are excellent -- as I just said.  The chips are very crunchy and deliver a lot of chocolate flavor.  As I dig in, I start to encounter the potato chips.  They appear completely crunched as a gritty and salty swirl.  It is not that great by itself by I like the salt that it delivers to the spoonfuls that contain it.  The chips were smaller and crunchier in Late Night Snack -- they were fudge-covered to preserve the crispy texture.  Without the fudge-covering here they decided to grind them into finer particles which is why I used the word gritty above instead of crispy.

This is an interesting limited botch batch flavor from Ben & Jerry.  Although imperfect, I applaud the use of potato chip mix-ins.  I understand it's hard to blend them into the ice cream at the factory without them getting soggy.  As I ate my way down the pint, I got used to the gritty swirl and appreciated the salt that it was delivering into the pint.  If you like salty mix-ins, this is a fun flavor to try this summer.

Ample Hills - The Munchies

The Munchies - Pretzel-infused Ice Cream with Clusters of Pretzels, Potato Chips, Ritz Crackers and M&M's

We have reached the final installment of my four-pint shipment from Ample Hills.    The flavor is The Munchies and is one of their most signature flavors.  Ample Hills has a reputation for going a bit over the top with their mix-ins and this is their regular flavor where they pull out all of the stops and toss in as many salty mix-ins as they can.  Other brands have 'lots of mix-ins' type flavors but this pint is one of the few which is not chocolate- or peanut-butter-centric -- in fact it was not for the M&M's, it would not have either.  Thanks to the publication of their cookbook, many of the older Ample Hills flavor's recipes can be found online somewhere and this flavor is no exception.  It is interesting how they infuse the base ice cream with pretzel flavor.  They heat milk with pretzels in it, let it steep for twenty minutes, and strain the milk and proceed.  These details are fun and are making me curious to try this out.

The top of the pint is a doughy color and many small pieces of mix-ins are visible at the top of the pint.  Digging in, the base ice cream does taste like pretzels -- rather cool how that steeping and straining worked out.  As advertised, there are a lot of mix-ins here.  The M&M's provide a bit of color and a small hint of chocolate while the pretzels, crackers and chips provide a bit of crunch and a bit of salt.  The salty mix-ins tended to glob up a bit into larger chunks.  The churning process gave these chunks the consistency of a crunchy cookie dough.  Some of the chunks were large enough that I had to 'cut' them before I could fit them on the spoon.

This was a fun pint.  I liked it, but I did not love it as much as I was expecting to.  I think I may have set my expectations a bit too high based on the fame that this particular flavor has.  Also, sometimes so many different types of mix-ins don't allow me to focus on any particular one.  In that regard, I prefer their Commodore flavor as it allowed me to focus on the potato chips.  Still, if you are a fan of salty mix-ins, especially pretzels, and you are in New York, then you need to try this.

Ample Hills - The Commodore

The Commodore - Salty Honey Ice Cream with Chocolate-Covered Potato Chip Clusters and Honeycomb Candy

We continue to work our way through Ample Hills' Taste of New York 4-pack.  Today's flavor is called The Commodore.  The flavor was created for their scoop shop on Vanderbilt Avenue in the Prospect Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn.  Since it is on Vanderbilt Avenue, they named it in honor of "Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt.  It turns out that Vanderbilt is associated with a popular urban legend pertaining to the origin of the potato chip.  The story goes that he was in a Saratoga hotel and send his fried potatoes back to the chef George Crum in the kitchen as they were too thick and had gotten too soggy.  Defiantly, Crum sliced them ultra-thin so they fried up extra crispy.  Vanderbilt liked the final result so much that the "potato chips" were added to the restaurant's menu and the rest is history.  There are some doubts as to the veracity of this urban legend but it is a fun story and a great excuse to base an ice cream flavor around a potato chip mix-in.  Along with the salty honey base and the honeycomb candy, this looks like an interesting pint.  I can't wait to dig in.

                                

The shipment came with a decorative postcard for The Commodore flavor.

Opening the pint shows the off-white yellow of the salted honey base with what looks like a bit of a caramel swirl -- or maybe that is honey because it is not listed..  With the first spoonful, it has a unique yet familiar flavor.  I was having trouble placing it.  The flavor of fortune cookies? or sugar cones? or perhaps honeycomb cereal?  I really liked it but I kept trying to figure out where I'd tasted that before.  Then there were the chocolate-covered potato-chip clusters.  You taste a little burst of salt each time you bite into it.  It doesn't sound like it is a great idea as an ice cream mix-in but it really is.  I have no seen it elsewhere since Ben & Jerry's discontinued its Late Night Snack flavor because the Jimmy Fallon flavor got "promoted" to the Tonight Dough.  More brands should feature potato chip mix-ins.  The ice cream was really thick with lots of mix-ins.  Holding it together was that salty caramel-ly honey swirl.  I scanned the ingredients to see if it was caramel or honey and I think it might be Lyle's Golden Syrup which is a honey substitute dating back to the nineteenth century.  It held the pint together really well.

This was one of the more memorable and successful pints I have reviewed here.  This checks all the boxes for what makes a pint interesting to me.   It has unique ingredients and mix-ins which I don't normally see yet it all came together in seemingly perfect ratios and it tasted amazing.  The saltiness was noticeable so perhaps drink a glass of water afterwards.  It's really too bad this is only available in the Vanderbilt Avenue scoop shop and by mail order.  Anyhow, if you are ever in that particular shop, this is the flavor to try.