Mountain Dew Baja Blast Gelato

 

Product circa: 2024

Whichever Taco Bell marketers called this product a "gelato" knew exactly what they were doing.  You could probably call this a sherbet, as it does technically have milk in the ingredients list, but this is more of an "Italian ice" product, than anything.  Essentially no creaminess, and yes, its flavor is noticeably that of Mountain Dew Baja Blast.  In the end, the marketers chose the most outrageous sounding frozen dessert to pair with a Mountain Dew product so that suckers like me would try it out of morbid curiosity.

Skinny Cow Snickerdoodle Sandwich

I don't often delve into "health foods" or anything with reduced calories specifically for pleasure.  However, the lady of the house is a big fan of Skinny Cow products, which are a slightly healthier option for those who enjoy frozen desserts.  As someone whose vices lie more toward chips and corn snacks, I am not a dessert lover.  However, I find myself constantly impressed with Skinny Cow.

Skinny Cow offers tons of different desserts in tons of flavors, but occasionally they'll issue some ephemeral ones as well.  This time they have a Snickerdoodle ice cream sandwich which I'm unable to ignore.

The experience begins in a fashion that's unlike actual snickerdoodles: the teeth sink into the two soft oatmeal cookies which have a deep flavor base of molasses.  Later detectable are brown sugar and a bit of cinnamon.  The ice cream is a simple and very enjoyable vanilla.

But in this case, the snack's "healthy" status is what elevates it.  Because Skinny Cow seeks to use less fat in their ice cream, they employ a more clever use of food gums to increase the cream's viscosity and improve the texture.  The result is a cream that's almost chewy, and it's really a joy to pull away each bite.

Between the ice cream's texture and the cookie's flavor, this snack belongs in the order of its full-fat brethren.  If Skinny Cow actually advertised these as ice cream oatmeal creme pies, which is what they really are, they'd be in 4-NOM territory.


Skinny Cow Snickerdoodle Sandwich:- Great

Ben & Jerry's Peanut Butter Jam Session

Ben & Jerry's has a line of exclusive flavors that you can only get at Target.  Here's one: Peanut Butter Jam Session.  I'll give you three guesses on what it tries to simulate.

Yes, it's peanut butter and jelly ice cream.  It's this a good idea?  I would answer, "Moderately".  The vanilla ice cream is mixed with swirls of jelly and peanut butter, simply put.  They did one thing right here: the jam used here is raspberry jam, and it just works.  Strawberry would have been more boring, and grape would have been a disaster.  And while I'm biased toward creamy peanut butter, I think Ben & Jerry's use of the crunchy variety adds a texture that isn't entirely welcome here.  And unfortunately, peanut butter, jelly, and cream don't make the most natural of combinations.

It's good stuff, but the little things here detract from the experience.


Ben & Jerry's Peanut Butter Jam Session:- Good
Original Ben & Jerry's(Vanilla, for comparison):- Great

acquired: Target

Ben & Jerry's Piña Colada

Ben & Jerry's is one of those brands that I really have to commend for keeping things fresh with their product's varieties.  Their stable of flavors is one of the biggest in the ice cream industry, those permanent flavors are always changing every few years, and they often send out "Limited Batches" of flavors to test on America's tongues.

This summery offering caught me off guard.  When I think of Ben & Jerry's ice cream, I think of them as rich and decadent.  Perhaps not as high in fat as something like Häagen-Dazs, but Ben & Jerry's original ice cream has always signified high quality ingredients and flavors that are full and assertive.

The first bite makes it clear that this stuff is not meant to be the rich and hedonistic mix that can soothe sorrows after a tough day or a bad breakup.  No, B&J have gone out of their way to make this Limited Batch light and refreshing.  The first ingredient in the product's Nutrition Facts is indeed cream, but the second is skim milk.  The result is that the mouth feel of this product is more like sherbet than ice cream.  In fact, it's not unlike the fabulous So Delicious coconut milk ice creams, though this product does not use coconut milk.

The "cream" is flavored with both coconut and pineapple that is very well balanced and instantly invokes the Piña Colada.  In addition, folded into the ice cream are small bits of dried coconut and dried pineapple.  Because these bits have sat in a tub of cream since its production in the factory, they end up being slightly rehydrated, and the resulting texture is nicely chewy.

A bowl of this stuff would hit the spot after mowing the lawn, for example.  But in the end, it doesn't quite reach the euphoric experience that defines ice cream as an indulgence.

Ben & Jerry's Piña Colada:- Good
Original Ben & Jerry's(Vanilla, for comparison):- Great

Turkey Hill Southern Lemon Pie

 See those bottles in the background? This is my blog that describes what I do with them.

One of best things about ephemeral ice cream flavors is that they're often indicated loudly on the carton's lid!  Look for that next time you're in the freezer aisle.

Turkey Hill has been known to throw out a lot of exciting new flavors, and this one follows suit as a fresh summery offering: Southern Lemon Pie.

The color is a bright, festive, and disturbingly artificial yellow, but that's where the intimidation stops.  Stirred into the ice cream are bits of pie crust and marshmallow: the pie crust is just about perfect and manages to maintain some texture even though it's been soaking in cream; the marshmallow attempts to mimic meringue, I imagine, and while it's not perfect, its texture definitely invokes the traditional lemon pie's white topping.

But for me, the star of this show is the ice cream itself.  The lemon flavoring present almost identically imitates lemon curd/custard.  It's bright yet rich, and it makes me feel like a kid.  But on top of this, Turkey Hill have gone the extra mile with texture.  I'm not sure how much xantham gum and pectin normally play a role in ice cream products, but this one would indicate that it has more of the stuff than normal.  The result is a thick, gummy texture that accurately portrays the mouth feel of lemon pie's curd/meringue duo.  After my first bowl of this stuff, I swore that the formula included a bit of cream cheese to improve the richness and texture, but in reality it was the work of Turkey Hill's chemical magicians.

Bravo.  Let's home this becomes a yearly seasonal offering.


Turkey Hill Southern Lemon Pie:- Outstanding
Original Turkey Hill(Vanilla, for comparison):- Good

Kemps Winter Snowmen

Winter is almost officially over, so let's get a winter limited edition snack out of the way while we still can.

I'll never forget one of my favorite childhood treats: ice cream Santa Clauses that came out only at Christmas time.  They didn't have a stick by which to eat them, or any hard coating to make them easier to hold.  They were just shaped, colored mounds of ice cream.  And yet they don't seem to exist anymore, and worse, nobody I know remembers them.

A mixture of vindication, pleasure, and nostalgia hit me in the gut as I ran across these in the supermarket.  They're not quite the same thing, but they're clearly meant to be similar in spirit.  There is also a Christmas tree version.

Unwrapped and bitten, these things strike a similar chord to the one I remember as a kid.  This variety is Neapolitan-flavored, and so almost each bite tastes different, which I really enjoy.  It's possible that the manufacturer adds a certain ingredient to the recipe that better allows the ice cream to stay a bit firmer while in the hand (and with no stick or chocolate exoskeleton to support it), and I think the product has a different mouth feel than normal ice cream as a result (as I always remembered).

These aren't quite as good as I remember, but it just may be the nostalgia coloring my judgement (as it's notorious for doing).  This is almost into the 3-NOM range.



Kemps Winter Snowmen:- Good

Ice Cream Oreo Cookies N' Cream

This time, instead of Oreos in ice cream we have ice cream in Oreos.  Specifically, we have Oreo ice cream inside of Oreos.

In some sort of silly meta food marketing idea, Oreo has decided to create another ice cream-inspired flavor, but this time the ice cream flavor would be cookies and cream-- simple vanilla ice cream containing crumbled chocolate wafer cookies-- thereby spending production and marketing money in such a foolhardy way that it leaves me surprised.

This is like making a variety of Doritos flavored like "Taco Bell Doritos Locos Tacos", or like Rice Krispies making a cereal meant to taste like Rice Krispies Treats.  Oh wait, they actually created the latter... and thank god you can still order it online, because it's incredible.

Reveling in the absurdity, I opened the package and sunk my teeth in, literally.  In a surprising fashion, they actually tasted exactly as I expected them to, which is to say not quite the same as the original Oreo.  The additional specks of cookie crumbs in the seemingly unchanged vanilla creme adds the slightest bit of extra chocolate cookie flavor, and perhaps a slightly dryer texture on the tongue and on the swallow.

Almost identical to the original, and I'm not sure I could have told you it was different with my eyes closed.


Ice Cream Oreo Cookies N' Cream: - Great
Original Oreo(for comparison): - Great

Breyers Blasts! Oreo Birthday Blast

It's December 31 and this post is to celebrate this first year of Ephemeral Noms and the last day of Oreo's 100th anniversary year, 2012.

Oreo got all that it could out of its commemorative Birthday Oreo iteration that came out over a year ago.  As late as this summer there could be seen in stores a collaboration between Oreo and Breyers called Breyers Blasts! Oreo Birthday Blast ice cream.

What this stuff amounts to is an overly complicated cake batter ice cream... and it didn't need to be that way.  Even though it's easy to understand that the cake-flavored vanilla creme of the Birthday Oreo is the centerpiece of the whole snack, I feel they gave it just a bit too much presence in this ice cream.  It might even be that the presence of this Oreo creme makes the mix a bit sweeter than you may expect, but it's barely noticeable.  I wish there were a bit more cookie crumbs in the mix, and perhaps even a bit less cake-flavored creme.

This stuff is good, but I'm not sure it's preferable (or appreciably different) than an average cake batter ice cream.


Breyers Blasts! Oreo Birthday Blast: - Good
Original Breyers Natural Vanilla(for comparison): - Good