Ample Hills - Oscar Night

Oscar Night - Cream Cheese Ice Cream with Pieces of Red Velvet Cake

It's Oscar Night and Ample Hills has the right ice cream for the occasion.  It is appropriately called Oscar Night.  They have a limited release of this flavor every year.  I am usually not in New York in February, so I haven't had this flavor before, but this year, I was excited to be able to able to put both the Valentines's flavor and the Oscar Night flavor into the same online shipment, so here I am eating Oscar Night on Oscar Night!  What does one eat while watching the stars on the red carpet?  Why red velvet cake of course!  Here, pieces of red velvet ice cream are immersed in a cream cheese base.  Sounds fun!

I open the pint and I see a lot of red chunks are visible right on top.  Some of the cake pieces are intact and some have been 'swirled' which for a cake means that small specks of red cake are distributed through the rest of the base.  Digging in, the cream cheese base is thick and sweet -- the cream cheese adds thickness here, but I detect no distinctive 'cream cheese flavor' that you sometimes find.  This base effectively acts as the 'frosting' for the cake piece mix-ins.  The cake pieces themselves are sweet and they stay soft in the frozen pint.  Red velvet cake usually -- but not always -- includes chocolate.  I don't taste much chocolate here.  It tastes like red-colored sheet cake.  I checked the ingredients and there is cocoa in the mix but it must not be very strong because I don't taste it.  It's good cake, though, I'm just making an observation so that you know what to expect.  The mix is good.  Some cake pieces are spoon-sized, while the rest peppers the base.

This is a fun pint to eat while watching the Oscars.  The red velvet cake pieces look beautiful and they taste pretty good as well.  This is easily much better than the Ben & Jerry's version of the flavor where they tried to use natural dyes to create the red color.  I think  By the time you read this, the Oscars will be over and this flavor will no longer be available, but this flavor returns every year.  If you are in the mood for red velvet cake during the Oscars next year, check this flavor out.

Ben & Jerry's - Red Velvet Cake

Red Velvet Cake - Red Velvet Cake Ice Cream with Red Velvet Cake Pieces & a Cream Cheese Frosting Swirl

Red Velvet Cake has been around since at least World War II but it has received a resurgenge in popularity in recent years due to the cupcake craze of the mid-2000s.  This 2012 flavor from Ben & Jerry's is intended to capitalize on that craze.  Here we have red velvet in the base as well as red velvet cake pieces.

Opening the lid, I see a pink color of the base.  Its a lighter color than red velvet cake would normally be, but that makes sense because its mixed with the milk and cream and the cream cheese swirl.  Digging into the pint, its a sweet and cool flavor.  The coolness I think is the effect of the frosting swirl.  The cake pieces reveal themselves deeper into the pint and they are a darker pink and are relatively numerous.  They were soft and cakey, not frozen.  Something was missing though.  I don't taste any cocoa!  I checked the ingredient list and I see buttermilk, but no cocoa.  I see some fruit juice down below but I think that's Ben & Jerry's not wanting to use artificial coloring.  They're a bit of a hippie company and avoid artificial ingredients.  Normally that's good, but here I think the red fruit coloring created an odd aftertaste in my mouth.  Not at first, but definitely as I got to the bottom of the pint.  It wasn't terrible, but it was a bit odd.

So, I think the idea of Red Velvet Cake Ice Cream may be a good concept but there were some missteps in this execution.  I think cocoa is a key ingredient and good old fashioned artifical red food coloring is the most efficient way to turn it red.  So perhaps a non-hippie ice cream company could give it a try?