Writer's Block: Frozen delights
Dec. 27th, 2011 07:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
indigozeal[Error: unknown template qotd]
This topic can't be broached without complaining about "frozen dairy dessert." Several of Breyers' flavors are so labeled because they don't contain enough cream to meet the FDA's definition of ice cream. In what way, though? Did Breyers just substitute milk? I'm fine with ice milk. I fear, though, that product's a huge hunk of tara gum they studded with cookie dough.
About flavors: I've never liked chocolate ice cream that much. It's thick and chokingly, chalkishly rich for a dessert that should be light, clean, and cool. I should love peach - peaches 'n' ice cream should be an ideal marriage - but they invariably get the cheapest vanilla on hand for the base, which ruins the whole experience. Mint chocolate chip and cookies 'n' cream are hard to screw up, but with the faux-chocolate bits they're substituting for real chocolate nowadays, corporations are doing their level best.
Many stands up here have their own version of an Almond Joy ice cream that has been reliably good. One local stand sells natural homemade strawberry soft serve, which in recent years has looked better than it's tasted, but it's hard to hold a grudge against bright pink soft serve. Dairy Queen several years ago had a Blizzard that combined strawberries, bananas, and Vienna Fingers that's yet to be topped, though this isn't really an ice cream flavor. A local brand of hard serve once offered a black raspberry flavor with mini chocolate Reese's-like cups filled with blackberry syrup that was pleasantly fruity instead of fructosey-fake. Though I usually favor chocolate and caramel over fruit flavors in my sweets, I tend to avoid ice-cream flavors with chocolate and caramel in combination, as they (the ice-cream flavors, I mean) can get rather indistinguishable and, as Lore Sjöberg notes, fairly pore-choking.
(Interesting experiments: the strawberry soft-serve place sells ginger hard serve, which is a pleasing hybrid of fruit and spice - not a mainstay, but a flavor you'd like to revisit once in a while. Dairy Queen, again, offered a "cotton candy" Blizzard that was, quite logically, just ice cream with crystalline sugar mixed in, a combination that was at once intriguing and off-putting but never off-putting enough to make you actually stop eating. They also once had a raspberry Blizzard which was plain soft-serve mixed with extremely sour raspberry...I don't know if "syrup"'s the right word, as I'm hesitant to associate the name of an actual food product with this flavor substance. The pink was radioactive, and the taste barely less so.)
.
This topic can't be broached without complaining about "frozen dairy dessert." Several of Breyers' flavors are so labeled because they don't contain enough cream to meet the FDA's definition of ice cream. In what way, though? Did Breyers just substitute milk? I'm fine with ice milk. I fear, though, that product's a huge hunk of tara gum they studded with cookie dough.
About flavors: I've never liked chocolate ice cream that much. It's thick and chokingly, chalkishly rich for a dessert that should be light, clean, and cool. I should love peach - peaches 'n' ice cream should be an ideal marriage - but they invariably get the cheapest vanilla on hand for the base, which ruins the whole experience. Mint chocolate chip and cookies 'n' cream are hard to screw up, but with the faux-chocolate bits they're substituting for real chocolate nowadays, corporations are doing their level best.
Many stands up here have their own version of an Almond Joy ice cream that has been reliably good. One local stand sells natural homemade strawberry soft serve, which in recent years has looked better than it's tasted, but it's hard to hold a grudge against bright pink soft serve. Dairy Queen several years ago had a Blizzard that combined strawberries, bananas, and Vienna Fingers that's yet to be topped, though this isn't really an ice cream flavor. A local brand of hard serve once offered a black raspberry flavor with mini chocolate Reese's-like cups filled with blackberry syrup that was pleasantly fruity instead of fructosey-fake. Though I usually favor chocolate and caramel over fruit flavors in my sweets, I tend to avoid ice-cream flavors with chocolate and caramel in combination, as they (the ice-cream flavors, I mean) can get rather indistinguishable and, as Lore Sjöberg notes, fairly pore-choking.
(Interesting experiments: the strawberry soft-serve place sells ginger hard serve, which is a pleasing hybrid of fruit and spice - not a mainstay, but a flavor you'd like to revisit once in a while. Dairy Queen, again, offered a "cotton candy" Blizzard that was, quite logically, just ice cream with crystalline sugar mixed in, a combination that was at once intriguing and off-putting but never off-putting enough to make you actually stop eating. They also once had a raspberry Blizzard which was plain soft-serve mixed with extremely sour raspberry...I don't know if "syrup"'s the right word, as I'm hesitant to associate the name of an actual food product with this flavor substance. The pink was radioactive, and the taste barely less so.)
.
