Van Leeuwen - Planet Earth

Planet Earth - Blue Spirulina Almond Ice Cream with Pieces of Matcha Green Tea Cake

The next flavor in the Brooklyn-based Van Leeuwen Ice Cream's spring line of Walmart-exclusive flavors is called Planet Earth (instagram link here).  This flavor features a blue spirulina almond base with pieces of matcha green tea cake.  Interesting flavor combination!  Let's see how this turns out.

Removing the lid, the base ice cream is quite blue!  I see one of the green matcha tea cake pieces on top already as well.  Digging in, I quickly see the planet earth connection here.  It looks a bit like a globe.  The blue is the water and the green was the land.  Perhaps that was obvious and I could have anticipated it above, but it looks pretty cool and I see it now.  The base is made from almond extract and it is sweeter than I expected.  It has a sweet, agreeable and aromatic flavor that many almond-extract foods have that is different than that of the flavor of crushed almonds.  I do not know how else to describe it.  It is good.  Spirulina is a blue-green-algae-derived superfood which is very nutritious but I am reading that it is mostly flavorless.  Here, it supplies the beautiful color.  The matcha cake pieces are chewy and have a mild tea flavor to them.  Matcha can be an acquired taste for some, but there are no worries here because the flavor is not too strong and it is immersed such an agreeable almond ice cream.  Mostly, it provides the beautiful green color.

This is a fun and beautiful "planet-earth" based ice cream.  The spirulina and matcha provide lots of nutrition and bright color but flavor-wise it is the pleasant almond-extract base which dominates.

Sweet Science - Pistachio

Pistachio - Pistachio Ice Cream with Ground Pistachios

The October season flavors from Sweet Science are here.  The first flavor is one I have reviewed before, Pumpkin Cheesecake.  It was good.  We're getting into my second year of following the seasonal flavors so we're starting to see some repeats.  The second October flavor is a new one, though, Pistachio.  Let's check it out.

Removing the lid, the top of the pint is the appropriate green color.  Not all pistachios come out green, but this one is.  I checked the ingredient list here and it looks like they are using spirulina to help with the green color.  I have written about spirulina before.  It is an all-natural, extra-nutritious dietary supplement which happens to have a bright green color.  The perfect green food coloring for those who don't want to use artificial ingredients.  The next thing I notice about the ice cream is the texture.  Pistachios have been ground to a small size and swirled into the mix.  Digging in, I notice the ice cream is quite thick and almost dry.  The ice cream actually crumbles a bit as I scoop it and it is nutty enough that I have to allow the spoonful to melt a bit in my mouth each time to allow me to fully taste it.  It's not that it is frozen, it is just extra nutty.  The flavor is quite good and the chunks are about the size as the chunks inside a chunky peanut butter.

This is a very good and interesting pint of pistachio ice cream.  The incompletely ground nuts add a gritty texture and enhance the pistachio flavor.  It is one of the better pistachio ice creams that I have had.  I think I still like Ben & Jerry's the best for the whole pistachios in the mix but you can't go wrong here.

Jeni's - Green Mint Chip

Green Mint Chip - Peppermint Ice Cream and Chocolate Chips, with Spirulina added for Color

For the sixth and final pint of my Jeni's shipment -- and my last pint of 2017 -- I chose Green Mint Chip.  Long-time readers know that mint chocolate chip is my favorite ice cream flavor so I am quite curious to know how a super-premium brand like Jeni's handles their implementation.

Jeni's has an interesting blog post about this flavor.  Evidently, mint chocolate chip ice cream is a relatively recent invention.  There was an ice cream flavor contest to decide what to serve at the royal wedding of Princess Anne and Mark Phillips in 1973.  "Mint Royale" by Marilyn Ricketts was the winning flavor and the flavor become an instant success.  I would have guessed the flavor was much older -- it seems like an old-fashioned flavor combination.

Also from the blog-post, Jeni seems sold on green color for mint cream as "color has a big impact on how we perceive flavor".  She won't use artificial colors though, so she came up with the idea of using spirulina.  The pictures at wikipedia and google-image search make it look like soylent green, but I have been assured that spirulina is not made out of people.  Spirulina is a cynobacteria or blue-green algae with a surprising amount of health benefits.  Leave it to Jeni's to use "perhaps the world's healthiest food" as a coloring agent.

Enough talk, lets eat.  The top of the pint is bright green with small chocolate specks visible.  Digging in, the ice cream is a bit hard.  The base has a fairly potent peppermint flavor.  The spirulina adds color, but not flavor.  The chocolate chips are quite crunchy and very chocolatey.  Coupled with the hard ice cream, the chips help create a crunchy texture to the whole pint.  It reminds me of hard-packed scoop that you might get an old-fashioned ice cream scoop shop -- only with top-shelf Jeni's-caliber ingredients.


I really enjoyed this pint of ice cream. It is bold and unique yet with a not to the old-fashioned crunchy green ice creams of childhood.  My favorite mint chip pints are still Graeter's and McConnell's but this one is very close.  Those both have softer chocolate chips, though, so it is not an apples to apples comparison, though.  I can see someone preferring this one for the crunchy chips.