What’s with cake? IE, why is “cake” a semi-popular ice cream flavor? Blue Bell is already heavily invested in cakey ice creams, yet here’s one more, Cake Batter. what is the “flavor” of cake batter other than “sweet” and “fake”? this started out as a limited product, available at stores only, and maybe it shoulda stayed that way (and yet i bought the stuff. jeez).

braum’s pumpkin ice cream is not brand-new nor is it available everywhere. (apologies to the reader from carson, calif.) it’s not as if pumpkin is even innovative; lots of ice cream makers make it, along w/ other seasonal flavors like eggnog. But there’s so little good ice cream in the dallas area that why-don’t-we-give braum’s a shout-out. The co. has its own cows, processing plant, bakery — it even raises the crops the cows eat, and it won’t open a store 300 miles beyond its HQ in tuttle, OK. I don’t 100% love all its flavors but in the pumpkin, “pumpkin puree” is listed as ingred #4 (1. milk 2. cream 3. sugar) and the flavor’s very pumpkiny — almost not even sweet — w/ a little textural grit to affirm that it has pumpkin in there

If someone sez something nice about you, then the thing to do is say something nice about someone else (once you stop preening, of course). So here it is: Ice Cream Ireland, one of my fave Other Food Blogs, written by one Kieran Murphy who seems to live a NYCE kind of life: He owns Murphys, a pair of ice cream/coffee shops in killarney and dingle (or is it an daingean? the controversy brews) where he makes his own ice creams, is diligent re: coffee, and blogs about it informatively.

if at this point, it feels like, oh new dreyers ice cream flavor zzzz who cares, remember that ice cream is one of the foundations of this blog; and w/ summer on the wane, the new product stream is starting to dry up. (so there won’t be many more new flavors to report, see.) Besides, these are so new, they’re not even on the website yet – how newsworthy is that? none of the 3 new ltd-edition flavors – cinnamon, coconut pineapple, and banana nut – are truly novel … dreyer’s parlor line (for 3rd party vendors who sell it by the cone) has coco pineapple and cinnamon. and HD has coco pineapple. and blue bunny has cinnamon. and baskin-robbins has banana nut. But these flavors are new-ish to smkts and that’s interesting, as is the fact that they’re all sorta light & fruity & summery

*foto is actually ltd-edition root beer cuz these flavors = so new, no fotos yet

between its predilection for making completely-average ice cream and its exorbitant prices (not to mention its unjustified rep as a font of greatness), it’s hard to resist any opp to take a swipe at blue bell. But one also hates to appear biased (har) or god forbid predictable, so let’s just lay this out there, judgment-free: Blue Bell Strawberry Shortcake ice cream, w/ vanilla ice cream (what else, for chrissake, it is, after all blue bell) blended w strawbs, chunks of pound cake, & a whipped topping swirl (not even “whipped cream”, but effing cool whip, can you believe that shit). And again, without judgment, let’s list alllllllll the other strawb flavors BB already makes: banana strawb, choc covered strawb, strawb & vanilla, strawb chzcake, and of course plain strawb

First, the disclaimers & acknowledgements: hoo-ha to Dreyer’s for trying to go lower-fat w/ its slow-churned light ice cream, w/ 5 more flavors being added to the 30+ list: almond praline, cherry choc chip, double fudge brownie, PB cup, & raspberry chip royale. And it’s not the WORST sweet item out there. But I’m sorry: this slow churned crap is god-awful. It’s touted as a miraculous process that creates a creamy texture; but there’s something weird about it. Something fake. Worse, it provokes an unpleasant reaction, GI-wise. Seriously, there’s something funky going on. Unfortunately, there’s so little innovation in ice cream right now that everyone’s copying it and idiots such as the WaPo are crediting it w/ reviving ice cream’s sinking sales w/out acknowledging that sales were sinking becuz everyone’s too scared shitless to intro truly new flavors (cuz “cherry choc chip”, “double fudge brownie” etc ain’t really NEW).

thanks to the pack mentality of the big ice cream makers, today is a 2-in-1: 1. A&W Root Beer Float ice cream from Breyers: vanilla ice cream w/ RB sherbet. 2. Dreyers Root Beer Float ice cream: vanilla + RB ice cream (as opposed to sherbet) (and a ltd-ed, btw). OK so here’s the obligatory JITB nod: last summer JITB had a RB float. More precedents: If you’ve visited the folks in Fla, you’ve seen RB float ice cream by smkt chain Publix. Smkt-brand ice cream seems 2 B the last bastion of innovation. To wit: Dreyers’ other summer-’06 flavors are both candy-themed (nestles crunch & butterfinger), done forever already by smkt brands.

Marc, the Indian scout of NYCE, suggested LaLoo’s goat’s milk ice cream as a blog item wks ago but it got (unfairly) dismissed as some kinda west coast boutique thing, cuz what’s the point of spotlighting a product most people can’t get? But then WF picked it up; CM, too. So now it’s still a boutique item but one-you-can-get-in-more-stores. “boutique item” in this case = $$$$, or more specifically $7.99 for a frigging pint. The rationale for this steep price izzat it takes 10 goats to produce the same amt of milk as a single cow. Goat’s milk iz said 2 B digestible for lactose-intolerant people so that’s a built-in mkt, altho the flavor of this stuff definitely has more of a tang than regular i.c. They have some interesting flavors: choc cabernet, pumpkin, cheesecake, molasses tipsycake, & mission fig which has nice little bits of seed

Haagen Dazs Mayan chocolate is better than the usual new prod intro cuz it’s at least original, not just a candy-bar-cloned deal but actually refs a concept reech weeth heestory: that the mayans were the first consumers of choc. HD’s so behind the thing, it created this fairly silly 3D-ish graphics program that takes forever to load and duzn’t tell ya a lot. (Link only if you want to send your computer into a spiral of inefficiency.) anyway taste-wise the i.c. is “rich dark choc w/ a hint of cinnamon” and a fudge swirl. def more of an adulty thing - not sweet, little bit intense, good paired w/ other flavors.

Boy talk about tailor-made for this blog: Starbucks Mud Pie ice cream bar. How can you lose w/ coffee + ice cream (not to mention sbux). itsa choc cookie w/ coffee ice cream coated in choc. But really it’s just sad, in that it embodies the inevitable surrender to the American appetite. Cuz Starbucks did try a more moderate approach w/ its clever Frappuccino bar, like a coffee version of a fudgesicle and much leaner than the 350 cals this has. But unfortunately the demand is for more-more-more in ice cream prods. As an aside, these ice-cream-on-cookie things are a hot trend, w/ similar items by Dove, Nestle/Toll House, Kemp’s, as well as a big expansion of the Klondike line

note slight discrepancy between bar on box as opposed to real life