Best & worst ice cream flavours of Summer 2009

Cafe Society
1

Now that the ice cream* season has come to the Northern hemisphere, and the Southern hemisphere already have experienced theirs, do you guys already have new favourites? Or have your friendly neighbourhood ice cream producers cooked up something you’re sceptical about? Wouldn’t touch if it was the last tub of ice cream in the about-to-die freezer on a desert island? Are you a mad scientist when firing up the ice cream maker?

I know there’s not enough time to sample all ice cream flavours of the world in real life, but even so, I love finding out what cultural oddities people in other countries put in their ice cream. As you’d probably expect, we Finns have ways of combining salty liquorice with ice cream. A Canadian friend was confused about the flavour of Punschrussin (that is, raisins soaked in this. As the only thing I could remember was that students in my alma mater used to drink hot punsch together with pea soup, I think I only deepened her culture shock. And I’d never have believed cookie dough ice cream if I hadn’t seen it myself (btw, if Ben, Jerry or anyone else on the mother ship reads this, put the pint-size Cherry Garcia back on the European market. It wasn’t nice to get me hooked on the flavour and then withdraw it.)

To kick off, one of my :dubious: of this season is peppermint rock and chocolate. I’m not saying that it can’t be done, but this was way too sweet and there wasn’t enough chocolate. Green apple joins the crowd, since it tastes and smells of the same artificial flavour that’s used in chewing gums and soaps.

A chocolate and chili eskimo pie I tried suffered from the opposite problem, not enough chili in proportion to the chocolate cover, and I’m still not crazy about the vanilla inside. Besides, the chili was in the shape of tiny wheat-containing crisps, which rules it out as a family treat. Either a lame or a mad smiley here.

Here are some I’m mainly undecided about, since I haven’t had the chance of trying them out yet: cardamom & rhubarb, lingonberry jam & digestive biscuits, and orange-carrot sorbet. Orange-carrot got the OK from the local newspaper testers, and the rhubarb one apparently tasted more like gingerbread than anything else. Clearly, personal testing is necessary, as you can’t trust anything just because it’s in a newspaper.

As for personal ice-cream making, I’m enthusiastic about trying a gluten-free rhubarb crumble, chai latte and Grandma’s Morello cherries in ice cream shape. Will have to share the summer’s experiments with family this time, and this means that e.g. green tea is right out. Not a favourite with my siblings. I last tried to make an Earl Grey tea gelato, which turned out full of bergamotty goodness. You get a slightly cooling, astringent mouthfeel that was more refreshing than the peppermint rock I dissed above. This far, Earl Grey gets my first :D.

Okay, your favourites or love-to-hates? Observations of weird beasts in the ice cream jungle out there? (You may mention eggs & bacon ice cream, which I must admit intrigues me.)

*For the purpose of this post, let ice cream = anything frozen in vaguely the right shape. Frozen yoghurt, gelato, sorbet, custard, kulfi, they’re all welcome here.

2

Hah! You must be talking about SIA Glass. I’m pretty skeptical about all those, but I’m looking forward to trying the Orange Chocolate.

As far as ice cream on a stick, I don’t know what the hell is going on with Lemon Age (lemon sherbet with lemon coating and cola-flavored gummy pieces?), except that lots of kids will probably buy it since it’s an Ice Age 3 tie-in. How do gummy pieces work in ice cream anyway? Wouldn’t they get hard and unchewable?

[hijack]I don’t think I’ve noticed you on the boards before, vifslan, but I just wanted to mention that your film is in heavy rotation in our house right now… :smiley: [/hijack]

3

My brother fantasizes about opening an ice cream shop named 31 Flavors of Pain–and Pork. We sometimes talk about what we’d serve there. My favorite flavors are baby rat chunk and hooks ‘n’ worms.

4

We made sweet corn recently, and I suspect we’ll be making more this summer. I want to try avocado and a couple other things. If anyone has any zany ideas and they sound like they have the remotest possibility of being decent, let me know and I’ll make it and post a review for you.

5

There’s this place by my house that started selling salt water taffy-flavored ice cream. Now, maybe it’s just my South Jersey roots speaking here, but damn, that stuff is amazing.

6

There’s a place on Martha’s Vineyard that sells Lobster Ice Cream, which would be gross enough by itself (as a general rule, meat of any sort as an ice cream flavor is probably ill-advised), but they also somehow make the ice-cream extra…buttery somehow, I guess to mimic the butter sauce people often have with lobster.

7

When I first started making ice cream, I fell for the mistaken belief that if butterfat was good in ice cream, then more butterfat was better. I found out I was wrong when I made up a batch of Philadelphia vanilla with straight heavy cream. But the time it got down churning and freezing, I basically had a gallon of sweet vanilla frozen butter.

8

Once a year our physics dept has a community outreach thing for kids. At one of the stations we use liquid nitrogen as a coolent to make ice-cream. The result is exceptionally smooth, I presume because the very cold nitrogen causes faster freezing and thus smaller crystals.

9

Re the carrot and orange sorbet - one of the most delicious things I’ve ever tasted was a carrot, orange and lemon granite I had in Anacapri. I tend to think, if the Italians eat it, it must be good - so I tried it and nearly passed out at just how great it was. Really refreshing and the right balance of sweet and sharp.

One of my favourite flavours of ice cream (outside the ordinary, obviously) is caramel garlic mixed into plain ice cream. They sell it at a little place in Soho, and it’s surprisingly good and very moreish!

10

Haagen Dazs has a limited edition flavor out right now. It’s caramelized pear and toasted pecan ice cream.

It is the single greatest flavor I have ever had in my life. I have spent more on this flavor than I have on alcohol this year. I beg you all, please buy as much as you can so it becomes a regular flavor.

11

I fail to see the downside of this.

Well, except for the impending heart attack.

12

I don’t like lobster, but quite like crab and can see that either being really tasty or absolutely disgusting. I’d give it a try, in either case.

13

I’ve been wanting to try pear ice cream and I love pecans. I’ll look for this.

14

Bluebell has a new flavor called “Groom’s Cake” and it does taste kinda like a traditional groom’s cake. It’s chocolate ice cream with chunks of chocolate cake and chocolate-coated strawberry hearts, with swirls of strawberry sauce and chocolate icing.

15

I have a pint of this in my freezer right now. I found it to be absolutely nasty… my cat wouldn’t even lick the lid! It was just so sweet and, well, peary! <<shudder>> Sorry to disagree. I guess this is why they come up with so many different flavors. Their lemon ice cream on the other hand is divine!

16

My all time favorite ice cream flavor is huckleberry. There’s a perfection to it that even ice cream with chocolate in it can’t match. I don’t make ice cream at home (mostly because I have a deep and abiding love for the artificial goop that makes commercial ice cream what it is.) Tillamook recently released a Mountain Huckleberry flavor I’ve been meaning to try. It will probably come home with me on my next trip to the store.

17

Pistachio was a hot flavor for ice cream in Turkey. Lemon and sour cherry were also good flavors.

18

My brother works for a local chef who makes very nice ice creams and sorbets at his restaurant. He (the chef) tried lobster once. It was Not. Good.

I made a very nice basil pineapple sorbet myself a while back. Just a couple of hours ago I made strawberry banana ice cream. It’s still hardening in the freezer but what I licked off the churn paddle tasted very good. Not exactly exotic but nice.

19

Someone should try making a pineapple, coconut and blueberry mix. I’d bet it will turn out very good.

20

Alton Brown had an avocado ice cream on one of his shows, you can probably find it through the Food Network. I tried it once and I liked it, but it got a less than enthusiastic response elsewhere. I took it, and one other flavor, to a church ice cream social. The maple-nut went fast, but the green color of the avocado was off putting to folks.

Someone upthread mentioned waiting for orange-chocolate. Many years ago Baskin Robbins had a flavor called Mandarin Orange Sherbet. I only tried it once, but it was good.