Milkjam Creamery - Pistachio Halva

Pistachio Halva - Pistachio Halva Ice Cream

Today is another flavor from the Minneapolis-based Milkjam Creamery.  They have a limited-batch flavor called Pistachio Halva.  The flavor is so limited that it is no longer available, but you never know if it may come back.  Anyhow, when the flavor was still listed, their description said simply "just that".  Thankfully, I found an instagram post of theirs which has a better description.

"Pistachio Halva: halva is a middle eastern sesame confection that is made by grinding sesame seeds (tahini) and mixing in sugar syrup and flavorings. here it’s made with pistachios and a little hint of rose water for a very light aromatic note."

That sounds interesting.  So, although this has pistachio in it like in the previous review, it is actually a sesame-based confection.  This should be fun.

The base ice cream is a light sandy yellow.  Most pistachio ice creams are green, so that's certainly a sign that halva is sesame based.  I see some large pieces of pistachio on top as well.  As I try the first spoonful, I can taste the pistachio, but I can tell that it is not the main flavor.  I have never had halva or tahini before, but the flavor does seem consistent with a sweet, sesame-based treat.  It's definitely interesting and unique -- and pretty good, too.  Pistachio pieces are used as mix-ins.  These are fairly large and provide quite a bit of flavor and chunky texture. 

This is a very interesting and unique pint of ice cream.  At first, I thought it would be like a twist on the standard pint of pistachio, but the halva/tahini is at least half of the flavor.  The rosewater is just for accent here.  I note some subtle tanginess, but it doesn't stick out as it does in a previous rosewater and pistachio pint.  Fans of the middle-eastern halva dessert would want to try this out as well as curious folks who are interested in trying something new.

Talenti - Sicilian Pistachio

Sicilian Pistachio - Pistachio Gelato with Pistachio Pieces

It has been a while since I've had Talenti Gelato, so I picked up a couple of pints.  I don't want to do all local brands while I am waiting for the new 2019 flavors to be available from the major national brands.  This flavor is called Sicilian Pistachio.  Talenti has a habit of using Italian-sounding adjectives to enhance their Italian gelato brand (Mediterranean Mint and Roman Raspberry to name just a couple) but Sicilian Pistachios are indeed a thing and they are used in this pint.  It's been a while since I've had a pistachio flavor, so this should be fun.

Unscrewing the lid, I see the bright light green color of the pistachio base as well as the complex colors of the nut pieces (some with their brown peels intact) below the surface.  Digging in, the gelato has the expected pistachio flavor and soft gelato consistency.  It is a little sweeter than most pistachio flavors that I have had, but not too sweet.  The nut pieces are quite small, but they are generously dispersed throughout the pint.  They don't deliver much nutty flavor by themselves but they do provide some crunchy texture which is welcome in what would otherwise be a homogeneous pint.

I enjoyed this flavor.  It is a fairly standard implementation of a pistachio ice cream/gelato.  It is a little on the sweet side and has small nut pieces.  For gelato fans who want a pistachio flavor, this is a reasonably well-done implementation.  For pistachio fans, there are other implementations which larger pistachio pieces such as Ben & Jerry's, or pints which blend in other flavors such as honey, cardamom or rosewater.  

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.

Ample Hills - Be Mine

Be Mine - Strawberry Ice Cream with Dark Chocolate Flakes

The Brooklyn-based Ample Hills Creamery had a free-shipping deal for their Oscar-themed flavor.  Their Valentines flavor was also still available as well.  I couldn't pass up the opportunity to get two limited batch flavors in one shipment, so I got four pints.  I decided to have the Valentine's Flavor first because we're already a week late.  The flavor is called Be Mine and it's a strawberry ice cream with dark chocolate flakes.

Opening the pint, I see the light pink color of the strawberry base.  I also see a bunch of small chocolate specks, but I only see them on one side.  Sometimes that happens on the top layer.  Digging in, the strawberry base is fully strained -- no solids or seeds -- and it is quite tasty.  The chocolate chips on the one side are fairly dense and provide a lot of crunchy flavor.  As I continued eating the pint, the mixing issues persisted.  There are large sections of the pint which are only the strawberry base and other sections which are chip-heavy.  I get the impression that this is not intentional, but I actually didn't mind.  The strawberry base is quite delicious so it was good to have some spoonfuls which contained only that so that I could appreciate it more.  As I got further down, I encountered a spoon-sized chunk of aggregated chocolate chips.  It was almost as if I was eating a crunchy version of Graeters.  Like the semi-accidental super chips in a Graeters pint, the big chunk of chocolate near the bottom was quite tasty.

I enjoyed this pint.  The mixing flaw was a bit strange -- I am almost positive that it is accidental -- but I went with it and I almost want to say I liked it better this way.  The smooth and fully-strained strawberry base was easier to appreciate this way and the denser sections of chips were fun.  I'm not sure how reproducible this mixing would be if I got this pint again, though.  Anyhow, it's a fun flavor for Valentine's Day.

Ben & Jerry's - Sweet Like Sugar

Sweet Like Sugar - Sweet Cream Ice Cream with a hint of Almond flavor & Shortbread Cookies & Cherry Ice Cream with Cherries & a Sugar Cookie Dough Core

Ben & Jerry's has new flavors for 2019!  Ben & Jerry's is the brand that got me started with these reviews.  I don't get to have their ice cream as often any more because I've reviewed all of the items on the current menu.  So, I'm relegated to waiting for new flavors to come out so that I can have Ben & Jerry's again.  For 2019, Ben & Jerry's is releasing three new "Core" flavors.  As has been mentioned in previous reviews, a "Core" flavor is where a there is a cylinder of a non-ice cream mix-in in the center of the carton with ice cream on the outside.   The first set of core flavors all contained thick and gooey mix-ins -- like caramel, fudge, jam, and later cheesecake and brownie batter.  Then in 2015 they came out with "cookie cores" where the core was made from cookie butter (baked cookies that are ground up and mixed with condensed milk to form a spreadable paste).  This year, they're releasing "cookie dough cores".  If cookie butter worked well, why not cookie dough?  The three cookie dough core flavors use three different types of cookie dough: sugar cookie dough, chocolate chip cookie dough and a 'no bake' cookie dough core.  I trekked down to my local scoop shop to pick them up.  They had one of them.  It is called Sweet Like Sugar and has a core of sugar cookie dough.  Surrounding the core is sweet cream, a hint of almond flavor, shortbread cookies, cherry ice cream and cherries.  That's a lot of flavors!  Let's see how this all works out.

Opening the pint, I actually see almost all the ingredients right away -- which is impressive because there are so many of them.  The two bases are split.  Sweet cream on one half, and cherry on the other.  The cherry base is a very light pink.  The top of the sugar cookie dough core can be seen.  Expectedly, it is the light yellow color of sugar cookies.  I can see one of the cherry pieces as well.  Digging in, the cherry base is light and subtle while the cherry pieces are larger than I expected and delicious.  The emphasis on the cherry side is on the cherry pieces.  It is quite good.  On the sweet cream side, I don't taste the hint of almond much -- perhaps too subtle for me.  I first confused the shortbread cookie mix-ins with the core.  They are different though.  The shortbread cookies are soft, but have certainly been baked.  The sugar cookie dough core is the most distinctive part of the pint.  It has an interesting texture.  It is softer and gooier than I expected -- some cookie doughs are thicker and have some grainy sugariness.  It is quite fun to eat.  There is not a very large amount of it compared to other core flavors though.  That was OK, because the surrounding ice creams were good.

This is a very interesting and flavorful pint of ice cream.  I don't know how Ben & Jerry's is able to mass-produce this blend of ingredients -- core in the middle with cherry base and cherries on one side and sweet cream and shortbread cookies on the other.  It all has the potential to go awry in the mix but each flavor remains distinct and delicious.  I did like the pint.  It's worth a try if you like cookie dough flavors.  There is more cherry flavor in this mix than I was expecting -- it isn't obvious when you see the pint in a freezer case that there will be this much cherry.  I really liked the cherry flavor, but people might be surprised.  I am anxious to try out the other two cookie dough core flavors.  I hope my local scoop shop stocks them soon.

Milkjam Creamery - I ♥ You

I ♥ You - White Chocolate Ice Cream with a Raspberry Rose Swirl

The Milkjam Creamery of Minneapolis released a flavor for Valentine's Day called I ♥ You.  I know it is after Valentine's Day already, but it's not too late to enjoy Valentine's themed ice cream.  I even have another Valentines flavor coming in a few days!  The flavor uses a '♥' in the name of the flavor.  I wondered if this was the first pint that I've had with an emoji in the name, but upon research the '♥' character was added to the unicode standard way back in 1993 -- long before we imagined using emoji's on our smart phones.  It was added as part of the Dingbat Block in Unicode 1.1 -- which itself was an importing of the Zapf Dingbat characters developed way back in 1978.  I'm always amazed at how early features like these were actually developed.  Apologies for the frivolous tangent about what most people would just say is 'just a heart'.  I was just trying to get the character into the article (and the article title, and article URL) and then my mind started to wander. 

The flavor is a white chocolate ice cream with a swirl of raspberry rose jam.  I have actually had a pint before from Sweet Science which combined raspberry and rose.  There, the flavors were blended into the base, here they are included in a swirl of jam.  After removing the lid, I see mainly the white chocolate base as an off-white cream color.  There is one dark pink section the jam visible on top as well as a faint pinkish hue visible in parts of the base.  Digging in, the base has the typical Milkjam texture, thick and dense but rather soft.  White chocolate does not stick out as a strong flavor for me, but the base is good.  The raspberry rose swirl does have the consistency of jam.  It has a strong and tasty raspberry flavor.  If there is rosewater in the mix, it's just an accenting flavor.  It is tasty and sweet and not too tart.  I think there were some mixing issues with the swirl.  It was hard to find at first, then it clung to the sides a bit and then I found more of it on the bottom half of the pint (I took a second picture below to get a better picture of the raspberry.  I was able to strategically spoon the ice cream in such a way so that most spoonfuls did have a bit of the swirl, but it could have been mixed a bit better.  The flavor was good though.  A little bit of swirl goes a long way and the white chocolate base does a good job of balancing the flavor.

This is a pretty good pint of ice cream.  There were some minor issues with mixing but it didn't take too much away from my enjoyment.  The swirl-to-base ratio is fairly low, but that is appropriate ratio as the swirl has a strong flavor.

Izzy's - Italian Strawberry

Italian Strawberry - Ice Cream made from Strawberries marinated in Balsamic Vinegar

Today we try another flavor from the Saint Paul-based Izzy's Ice Cream.  This is the People's Flavor Award winner from 2002:  Italian Strawberry.  Note that the flavor seems missing from the Flavor Award menu, but is correctly listed a separate article about the Flavor Awards.  This flavor is made from strawberries marinated in balsamic vinegar.  I've seen this flavor combination once before -- at Morganstern's during my New York City ice cream crawl.  Balsamic vinegar is sometimes used to mute strong flavors like strawberries or figs.  I'm looking forward to checking this out.

Opening the pint, I see the pink flavor of the strawberry base with quite a few solids and strawberry seeds visible as well.  The aroma of balsamic vinegar is noticeable right away as well.  Digging in, I can taste both strong strawberry and vinegar right away.  The flavor seem to exist on separate planes -- they don't seem to blend or distract from other.  I think I notice the vinegar the most at the beginning and end of every spoonful.  The ice cream itself is very dense and creamy -- not a lot of air pumped into this -- and the strawberry is delicious.

This is an excellent blend of strawberry and vinegar.  I can see why this won a People's Flavor Award.  You have to be on board with the use of vinegar in ice cream -- if you're not perhaps just try a scoop first instead of a full pint. Otherwise, this is really good.