Wondering About Some Flavors

This is just something that I'd been thinking about since David Letterman's successor was announced.  I've noticed a steady increase in the amount of Ben & Jerry's flavors named after characters, comedians, and sketches affiliated with Lorne Michaels.

Two flavors named after Jimmy Fallon
Schweddy Balls
Scotchy Scotch Scotch
Liz Lemon
Two Wild & Crazy Pies
 and  Wayne'Swirled

I"m curious to see if anything will happen to Americone Dream's name now that Stephen Colbert will be one of Fallon's time slot rivals.

Cooooooooookies.

Ice cream sandwiches go back pretty far, and for a long time there was a chocolate chip sandwich that I remember from my youth.  Vanilla ice cream between chocolate chip cookies, and rolled in more chocolate chips.   ..............   It was delightful, and when the cookies are exposed to the ice cream long enough, they are firm enough to hold form while soft enough for you to bite without ice cream squeezing out everywhere.  Under names like the New England name "Hoodwich" and more general "chipwich", they could be found in beach concession stands, ice cream trucks, and now in Trader Joe's freezer cases.

A few years ago, Ben & Jerry's took this concept forward, crossing it with their famous Cookie Dough (a flavor recently renamed).  What happens when you take a chipwich, disassemble it, reconfigure it, and cram it in a pint?  Milk & Cookies!  It's more like Cookies & Milk, but the ice cream is so good that I'll give them that.

My Intro to Cookie Cores.

A little over a year ago, Ben & Jerry's introduced there "Core" line.  Many of them were a combination of two flavors with a sauce at the heart of the pint (be it fudge, raspberry jam, or caramel).  This year some cookie core flavors have been released.  The feature in this post is Peanut Buttah Cookie Core.  I can see how the title works, but I was hoping for "Buttah" to be reserved for some Mike Myers Saturday Night Live flavor.

Getting down to experiencing this flavor, I'd suggest getting a glass of water with it.  There are some ice creams where the water really cleanses the palate.  In my opinion, Americone Dream is one of those flavors, and so is Peanut Buttah Cookie.  The peanut butter cookie core is thick enough to differentiate from the rest of the pint.   The consistency is smoother and more fluid than the graham cracker swirl you fin in cheesecake pints or some pie flavors.  In addition to the core, you encounter three other forms of peanut butter thoroughly mixed.

The base is peanut butter ice cream.  Smooth, sweet, and creamy, with a light color.  The next element thrown into the mix are little peanut butter candy crunchies.  They're all pretty small and uniform.  Aside from being one of the sweetest parts, I think a key role for them is to give the ice cream (sans core) some texture.  It adds to the experience.  With the Core line, you have to target the core with you spoon to make it part of the mouthful.  The main ice cream, having some other parts mixed in affects most of the spoonfuls.  You also get chunks of peanut butter cookie.  In some respects, the  cookies are treated like you'd see in cookies 'n cream,  only the PB cookies are more chewy than crunchy.

Altogether, I really liked it.  It's not often that I encounter peanut butter cookies worked into an ice cream.  I have had peanut butter sauce on ice cream, tasted the crunchies somewhere in my past, but this pint showed me other utilizations for peanut butter in an ice cream and tastefully combine the forms.  I'd compare it to a  theoretical Iron Chef episode where the mystery ingredient is peanut butter.  Instead of a multi-course meal, the consumer's given all these dishes together.

Thank you B&J's.  Great job.

Some Limoncello Gelato on a Warm Summer Day.

Hi everyone.  The past few days, Boston was going through a heatwave.  What do I do?  Try a new seasonal gelato!

This flavor is from the Whole Foods Market brand of imported gelato.  There's a great deal with these 30.4 oz containers, and aside from today's special feature, I'd recommend the hazelnut flavor.  I was wondering why they measurement on the packaging was for weight, and not pints or gallons.  Using an unstandardized unit of measuring volume, you roughly get 30-ish mouthfuls.

Yesterday, I saw something new, limoncello gelator. The primary flavor came from lemon juice, though at home I love adorning vanilla ice cream with some lemon rind.  With my first spoonful, I dug deep into this slow churned Italian treat.  Some meringue, some lemon swirl, and some straight-up gelato were all collected into one utensil.  Like with Roba Dolce's pink grapefruit sorbetto, the gelato was clean, crisp, and so refreshing.  The taste of lemon pulls no punches in getting that citric taste through.  Imagine if a lemon sorbet was smoother in texture (thank you, milk).

For me, the only criticism for possible changes is just out of personal preference.  I could have done without the meringue pieces if it meant more of that amped up lemon.

Welcome to Frozen Faves.

By trade, I'm an illustrator, but I've spent so many years working in supermarkets.  It exposed me to may strange foods, and especially on those hot summer days I was drawn to the freezers.

Frozen confections!  Ice cream, sorbet, gelato, sorbeto...  Thinking of it makes my mouth water.  I live in Boston, so having the Ben & Jerry's Vermont factory a state away is a great thing.  I've also tried food from smaller businesses like the Rhode Island based Roba Dolce.

The accompanying image is from the bed of my scanner.  Two lids serving as testimony of a  tale of two flavors.  The one on the left, and it's predecessor on the right.

As a fan of these foods, I've witnessed the power of the people.  If something doesn't feel that well, it may be taken out of retail circulation.  If there's public outpouring of love for a flavor in moratorium, the company may very well put it back in production.  I remember the story of Ben & Jerry's "Dave Matthews Band Magic Brownies".  While I respect the views of people who prefer the safer favors, I like to see the companies get creative while in good taste (pun intended).  The thing about Magic Brownies is that it presented itself to bring three main components to the table.  Vanilla ice cream, fudge brownies, and a raspberry swirl.  Aesthetically it looked great, but it tasted like black raspberry ice cream and fudge brownies.  I wasn't tasting the three features for their separate qualities.

What do I do?  I wrote.  I put down the spoon, got the computer, and wrote the company a polite e-mail with suggestions.  Having seen peanut butter filling pretzels (i.e. "Chubby Hubby"), I was thinking why can't the company fill the fudge brownies with the raspberry swirl.  It would separate the flavors of the swirl and the cream, it would saturate the brownies with luscious berry flavor, and when in the process of production, should some brownies burst.  The randomness would create some unique visual features in the ice cream.

A few months later, there was a sell-off.  A "Dave Matthews Band Magic Brownies: Encore Edition" was introduced, and the two sold concurrently.  The change wasn't exactly what I had suggested, but the statement of separating the components was to be noted.  If as one lone writer or one of the many fans,  I'd like to take some personal pride in bringing this change.  The Encore Edition took out all but the fudge brownies and instilled a sweet cream swirl in with black raspberry ice cream.  I'm not sure scientifically how this altered the taste experience, but it did.  Encore Edition outsold the original, and eventually was the lone DMB flavor from B&J's.

That's what I have to say about from the perspective of this connoisseur and reviewer.  I welcome any comments about your experience with this sell-off.