Sweet Science - White Russian

White Russian - Coffee Liqueur and Vodka Ice Cream with Hazelnuts

We start the new year with a pint from the St. Paul based Sweet Science brand: White Russian.  This is a member of their cocktail collection, so it cost a couple of extra dollars.  The cocktail it is designed after is the flavors namesake, the White Russian.  Everyone remembers the White Russian as the favorite drink of the Dude in the Big Lebowski.  It is made with coffee liqueur, vodka, and cream.  A cream-based drink is a good basis for ice cream -- the cream is already in there!

Removing the lid shows an off-white base with two full hazelnuts visible right on the top.  They look like they were manually added just before the lid was put on.  Digging in, the texture is fairly soft.  I have heard that mixing alcohol with ice cream makes it harder to freeze.  It is still creamy but it is definitely not hard.  The spoon sliced through it pretty easily.  The alcohol is noticeable right away.  Then the coffee liqueur.  I am not all that familiar with the cocktail so I shared with a friend.  She assured me "it tastes just like the drink".  As I ate further down into the pint, I didn't see any more hazelnuts until I got to the very bottom.  There were two more hazelnuts sitting on the bottom of the pint.  They didn't hurt anything, but I'm not sure what the hazelnuts were doing here.

This was an interesting pint.  A 'cocktail' collection where they make a pint out of a mixed drink is a decent idea.  A cream-based drink like a White Russian is ideal for this because it is almost like melted ice cream to begin with.  If you like White Russians, give this a try.

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.

  

Graeter's - Pumpkin

Pumpkin - Pumpkin Ice Cream with Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Ginger & Cloves

I was at Whole Foods last week and I found another seasonal flavor -- Graeter's Pumpkin ice cream.  It looks like a standard pumpkin-spice base with no mix-ins.  Since it is a seasonal flavor and I am running out of time before Christmas, I figured I should sneak it in.

Opening the pint, the pumpkin base is the expected orange color.  In the first spoonful, I taste the pumpkin and quite a bit of spice -- though I wouldn't say the spice flavor is strong enough to say that it was 'spicy'.  It is a good spice blend.  Very similar to our family pumpkin bread recipe.  We use allspice instead of ginger but the other three spices (cinnamon, nutmeg & cloves) are the same.  The spices are enough to keep it interesting as you eat the whole pint.

Almost every brand does a pumpkin implementation and they are all fairly straightforward.  The most interesting pumpkin flavors have come from Jeni's and Sweet Science because they use five-spice powder, but this is still a very solid implementation of a pumpkin ice cream.  Pumpkin is a fun seasonal flavor but you don't want to overdose on it, so it might be helpful to split this pint with a friend.

  

Jeni's - Boozy Eggnog

Boozy Eggnog - Egg Custard and Nutmeg Ice Cream with Middle West Spirits Bourbon Whiskey

The fifth pint of my Jeni's shipment is Boozy Eggnog.  It is the last of the 2017 Holiday flavors (the sixth pint is a standard flavor) and so I am excited to eat it before Christmas.  As mentioned in a previous review, I am not a big fan of eggnog as a beverage, but it makes for good ice cream.  Adding eggs to milk is an acquired taste, but adding eggs to ice cream makes custard and who does not like custard?  Here, Jeni's adds the usual nutmeg to spice it up and she uses bourbon whiskey instead of the usual rum.  I found a video of Jeni herself talking about the flavor here.

Opening the pint, the custard base is a bright yellowish white color and some specks of nutmeg are visible.  Digging in, the custard base is quite soft.  The spoon cuts through it quite easily.  The bourbon whiskey is quite noticeable right away -- it is "boozy" eggnog after all.  The bourbon provides a decent kick.  It is not too sweet and does not leave a burning feeling in the back of your throat like some bourbons can.  The nutmeg provides quite a bit of flavor as well.  Here, the egg custard is soft and creamy and provides a good base for it all.

I quite liked this pint.  Eggnog fans will certainly love this, but even those who aren't fans of the thick dairy drink will like it as a bourbon custard accented by nutmeg.  Perfect for the holidays.  McConnell's has a very similar flavor which I liked, but I think Jeni's is a bit better because it is a bit softer texture and more booze.  It looks like this flavor might be sold out for 2017, but I am sure that it will be back next year.

  

Häagen-Dazs - Chocolate

Chocolate - Chocolate Ice Cream

Today, we look at another staple flavor in the Häagen-Dazs line: Chocolate.  As mentioned last week, I picked up a couple of simpler flavors for when my niece and nephew came to visit and they didn't end up eating any of it.  More ice cream for me!  Chocolate is one of the three original Häagen-Dazs flavors along with Vanilla and Coffee.  This is the also favorite pint of another one of my nieces.  She uses it to make ice cream shakes.  I am looking forward to formally reviewing it.


Opening the pint, the ice cream is brown as expected.  Digging in, it tastes like really good chocolate.  It is actually harder to describe the simpler flavors, but I'll try.  It is definitely not dark chocolate, there is no strong bite to it.  It is not cloyingly sweet like a milk chocolate bar.  But it is still quite chocolatey.  It kind of tastes like hot cocoa, but cold and churned into a creamy ice cream.  Like the strawberry from last week, there are very few ingredients.  Here they use cream, skim milk, cane sugar, cocoa and egg yolks.  I like the flavor and it stayed tasty as I ate the whole pint.

Häagen-Dazs does the simple flavors very well and this is no exception.  If you are just looking for chocolate that is not too strong or too dark and with no mix-ins then you can't go wrong with with this pint.
 

  

Jeni's - Bangkok Peanut

Bangkok Peanut - Peanut Butter & Honey Ice Cream with Toasted Coconut and Cayenne Pepper

The fourth pint in my Jeni's shipment is Bangkok Peanut.  This is a fun flavor dating back to the days of her first scoop shop in the Columbus North Market.  It is inspired by a couple of Thai restaurants nearby.  Peanuts and spice.  I love Thai food.  I can't wait to check it out.

Opening the pint, the honey peanut butter base has the expected orange color.  Lots of the shredded coconut is available as well.  Digging in the peanut butter ice cream is quite good.  Sometimes peanut butter ice cream can be thick and heavy, but mixing it with honey does a good job of brightening it up a bit.  I liked it.  The shredded coconut adds quite a bit of texture to the pint.  The coconut flavor it provides is not too strong.  It goes with the peanut butter well.  I did not notice the cayenne pepper right away but it was something that slowly built up as I ate several spoonfuls.  Jeni's website descriptions often talk about the 'finish' of an ice cream flavor.  That sounds like what is happening with the cayenne pepper here.  I liked this effect.  The spice did not distract from the flavor while I was eating it, but I noticed it later.  I do have a relatively strong spice tolerance though.  Others I know who have tried this flavor noticed the spice sooner.  It's not hot, though, just a nice little kick of flavor.

This was an excellent pint of ice cream.  It is basically peanut butter, but it does peanut butter in a very unique way.  The honey brightens up the base, the coconut adds texture and the cayenne adds a bit of bite to the finish.  Well done.

Häagen-Dazs - Strawberry

Strawberry - Strawberry Ice Cream

Today we go back to the basics.  The Häagen-Dazs brand's implementation of Strawberry.  I picked up a couple of pints for when my niece and nephew came to visit (they appreciate the simple flavors) but they did not end up having any.  I can't let good ice cream go to waste, so I added them to my queue.  Häagen-Dazs has been selling Strawberry ice cream since 1966.  I have heard good things, so I am looking forward to this pint.

Strawberries are not berries by botanical standards.  They are an 'aggregate accessory fruit' of the genus Fragaria.  Different species of strawberries are native to almost every part of the world (Old World and New World).  People have been breeding and cultivating them for centuries.  The most common cultivar commercially is the 'garden strawberry' which was developed in Britanny, France in the 1700s using two species from the New World: Fragaria chiloensis and Fragaria virginiana.  This garden strawberry is larger and heartier than most of the wild varieties.

On to the ice cream!  The top of the pint is pink as expected.  You can tell that the whole strawberry is used in the base because some seeds are visible in the mix.  Digging in, the strawberry flavor is quite good.  In previous reviews, I have mentioned that the sweetness of strawberries creates a bit of a challenge -- often a brand will try to cut the flavor with cream cheese, sour cream or even balsamic vinegar.  That is not the case with Häagen-Dazs.  The ingredients of this pint could not be more simple: Cream, skim milk, strawberries, cane sugar, egg yolks.  The flavor is quite good, though.  They must have found just the right balance of ingredients.  Occasionally there are pieces of strawberry in the pint.  In previous pints, these pieces have caused issues because they can be frozen and feel weird to bite into.  Not here, though!  The pieces are quite good and stay soft even immersed in the frozen ice cream.

I liked this pint very much.  It is just a simple strawberry flavor, but it is done very well and tastes great.  Good flavor, good mix-ins.  Häagen-Dazs does the simple flavors very well and strawberry is no exception.