Review: Blizzard of the Month - Caramel Nut Roll

Yes, it's November, and that means a new Dairy Queen Blizzard of the month! October took care of Pumpkin Pie, so I was wondering what kind of potential holiday-themed concoction they would come up with to honor American thanksgiving? Well the answer is clearly....peanuts, caramel, and marshmallows? Not like pecan or...something? DQ claims this "took all my favorite desserts and combined them in a treat so delicious it makes the turkeys jealous." Which desserts exactly? And more importantly, who the hell is this anonymous Blizzard describer that seems to be speaking in first person to us? Seriously, does this even qualify as anything thanksgiving-y south of the border?

OK, OK, I guess it doesn't really need to relate to thanksgiving - and if it somehow does, it's way over my head. And don't get me wrong, I like all three primary ingredients in this mixture of "gooey caramel and marshmallow blended with peanuts." In fact, I generally enjoyed this blizzard. There were a LOT of peanuts in it, which is good because I am a big fan of peanuts + vanilla ice cream, but I could see it getting a bit overwhelming for some. In fact the peanut overload did make it a bit difficult to isolate the other flavours that were supposed to be present. I could taste the marshmallow, though as the flavour is somewhat similar to vanilla soft serve in the first place, it took a bit. As for the caramel...

You are looking at the only evidence of caramel I could find in this Blizzard. It just...wasn't really there. Which is a shame, because it would have added an extra dimension to a treat that was essentially just peanuts + vanilla. Note to DQ employees: equally proportioned mix-ins!

Recommend to a friend? Yes, if you like peanuts. This was a fairly satisfactory treat
Repurchase? Potentially. I would probably put Crispy Crunch ahead of this one though. :-/

Review: Haagen Dazs "Dulce de Leche"

Our second Haagen Dazs flavour up for review is Dulce de Leche. Dulce de leche is a milk-based caramel that originated in South America - it can be bought in select grocery and specialty foods stores, or can be made at home by cooking a can of condensed milk.

So we are not talking about normal 100% sugar-based caramel for this ice cream treat, but something a bit smoother and a bit richer. Nonetheless, we had some concerns that this flavour might be too sweet, and we did not want to repeat our Hokey Pokey experience. When we opened the container, we found a pale golden-brown ice cream with visible swirls of dulce de leche.

This ice cream was quite easy to spoon out of the little container and into our own bowls, so without much ado we got down to the taste testing. This ice cream has a nice, light caramel flavour, and the pockets of dulce de leche are rich but not overwhelming. While it is sweet, it's definitely not sickly sweet; we felt that Haagen Dazs did a good job of balancing the sugar while maintaining the distinctively smooth taste and texture of dulce de leche. This is a simple flavour that Haagen Dazs has done very well.

Recommend to a friend? If you haven't tried dulce de leche before, this would be a great introduction to the flavour. If you like caramel, you will probably enjoy this, especially as it isn't as harshly sweet as traditional caramel but has a very pleasant flavour.
Repurchase: J: Yes - it might be really nice with a fruit torte - B: Yes, though this is definitely something to eat in moderation - if you're looking to down a pint after a break up, this is probably going to be too much sugar for one sitting.

Nanaimo: Waterfront Confections

With J away for a week in her home town, I had to find another temporary partner in crime for the sampling of ice cream. Luckily, I was able to convince my friend K that what we really needed after a day at school was some ice cream. And since the weather was nice, we decided to go down to the downtown waterfront promenade (boardwalk?) just past Maffeo Sutton Park to sample some ice cream from Waterfront Confections.

 This little shop is both an ice cream and a candy store. They have an excellent selection of modern and nostalgic sweets, including a good variety of imported licorice treats. K is a real candy connoisseur, so I'm sure he will be back at some point to check out the candy again, but for now we came for ice cream.

Although there are three shops on the promenade that serve ice cream, Waterfront Confections is the only one that makes its own ice cream on site (the others scoop brands like Island Farms that can be found at the grocery store). They had an interesting selection of flavours including the standard chocolate and vanilla, to tiger (my sister's favourite regardless of maker) and white chocolate-raspberry.

No matter how many times I rotate and save this image, it is still upside down...

But you get the idea.

 K opted for a triple scoop in a waffle cone. He chose white chocolate-raspberry, black cherry, and bubblegum. When asked why he chose those flavours, he said that he enjoys eating food that does not look natural in colour, and in that regard I think he made a good choice.

According the K, all three had a nice flavour. He appreciated that the bubblegum did not have pieces of gum in it, as usually when ice cream manufacturers opt to do this, the gum is of poor quality, and it's hard to chew gum and eat ice cream at the same time. The black cherry ice cream had a good quality of fruit in it, and the white chocolate-raspberry was probably more white chocolate than raspberry but captured both flavours well enough.

For my cone I chose to go with wild blackberry sorbet and seaside caramel.

Blackberries grow like weeds around here, so being able to find local wild blackberries should be relatively easy, even if it might be a pain to find enough to make this flavour regularly. The taste of it reminded me of a light blackberry jam flavour that wasn't too sweet or too tart. I chose seaside caramel, because since we were right by the water, I thought it would be appropriate to select one of their ice creams named with a nautical theme. (I believe one of the others was chocolate barnacle swirl, or something to that effect...obviously containing no real barnacles) Seaside caramel was a very buttery caramel taste and though I'm not sure it combined well with the blackberry sorbet, it was still very nice. I would buy both flavours again.

In conclusion, if you're looking for some ice cream and a nice stroll by the docks, skip the other places on the promenade and go to Waterfront Confections, where you can get home-made ice cream to top off your trip to the seaside.

Review: Breyers "Smooth & Dreamy Vanilla Baked Apple"

Today's review is for Breyers "Smooth & Dreamy Vanilla Baked Apple," just one of the flavours in their line of light ice creams that claim to be "1/2 the fat of regular ice cream" due to the use of some fancy-pants cream press system (whatever that means). Not sure if I buy the pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo, but the nutrition information shows that this ice cream is indeed lower in fat than regular ice cream: in fact, while our previously reviewed Island Farm Black Forest Cake ice cream has 15% of your daily recommended fat intake per 1/2 cup serving, Vanilla Baked Apple has only 5%, so 1/3 the fat of this particular regular ice cream. Not bad!

Also of note is that it is actually labelled as "ice cream", which means it has the ingredients to qualify for such a label. This is important because more than once I have been careless in my reading of the package and have ended up buying "frozen dessert" products which, compared to ice cream, can be just plain nasty and full of plant oils.

I know when I dream, I dream of Breyers

My last experience with Breyers was rather unpleasant (it was one of those "frozen dessert" scenarios that we ended up washing down the sink) so I would normally be hesitant to try another one of their products. However, since the label clearly says "ice cream" and because vanilla baked apple sounds kind of awesome, we decided to give it a go. Let's open 'er up and take a look at what we're working with.

Holy freezer catastrophe, batman! Yes, this is what it looked like when we opened it! Ack! Either the consistency of the swirl in the ice cream wasn't substantial enough to hold up to being frozen, or somewhere along the line this thing got thawed and refrozen. Or something else that would compromise it. I remember working for a grocery store that will remain unnamed where pallets of ice cream were left outside the freezer for up to an hour at a time, and you have to think that this sort of thing might affect the product.

But not to be put out, we decided to try it anyway, even though it looked ugly as heck. There are some nice vanilla bean specks in the ice cream portion, and the baked apple swirl looks well proportioned so as not to be either overpowering or underwhelming, so despite the freezer damage, once scooped it looked promising.

By now, J and I have both sampled this ice cream more than once in our quest to finish off the carton and make room in the freezer for future purchases, and I think I can safely say that we still don't really know what to think of this flavour. I guess we can start with the positives.

Even though this is a "light" ice cream, it doesn't appear to have any artificial or synthetic sugars, like Splenda or aspartame. While these can be great for diabetics, I find they leave a really nasty aftertaste that I just can't ignore. It also has a really nice texture for not being full fat. Sometimes low fat ice creams will be extremely hard or almost granulated, and this was definitely neither of these things.

But the taste... There is something weird about it, and we just can't figure out whether it's coming from the vanilla ice cream or the baked apple swirl. You know how I mentioned artificial sugars and the weird aftertaste? Well even though this thing doesn't have those notorious offenders, it kind of tastes like it does. There is something chemically-tasting in there that just doesn't sit well. It's not like it tastes bad but it's not great either.

The vanilla ice cream part is pretty standard (is the chemically taste coming from here?) and as stated before, the texture doesn't scream diet product, which is a good thing. The baked apple swirl (or is this the offending party?) is a bit caramel-y but you can also taste some tartness, presumably from the dried apple flakes cited in the ingredients. Seriously, if it wasn't explicitly in the ingredients, I would've assumed there were no actual apples in this product, as they are more like bits of apple dust than fruit. We shared some with my parents this afternoon, and while my father said he thought the flavour was overpowered by cinnamon, the rest of us couldn't actually taste any cinnamon at all. Weird. Both my parents thought the flavour was pretty awful, and we both decided that the more we ate, the less we liked the taste.

What really hurts this ice cream, in our opinion, was the lack of texture. While the texture of the actual ice cream part was nice and creamy, the fact that the swirl was, if anything, slightly gritty in texture was pretty disappointing. It would have been a huge improvement if there had been any discernible apple pieces or chunks in there, like an apple strudel filling or something similar. But no, instead we get drippy caramel-like substance and apple dust. Fabulous.

So what's the final verdict?

Recommend to a friend? What we would actually recommend is to get a nice apple pie and top it with a low fat (or if you're not concerned about calories, full fat) vanilla ice cream scoop. As far as imitations go, this one just doesn't cut it.
Repurchase? J: Maybe one more time if it was in better condition to re-evaluate it. B: No thanks, I'll pass.

Review - DQ Blizzard of the Month: Ooey Gooey Caramel Brownie

With September well underway and us having yet to review the Dairy Queen Blizzard of the Month, when B took a left leaving the university this afternoon I knew what was on the radar.  I ordered first, and as I stumbled with my request; "I'd like an Ooey Gooey Caramel Brownie Blizzard please, the little regular size one, I mean, a small one, that's the one I consider regular," B gave my ordering technique a grade of FAIL.  Sure enough, our regular table was unoccupied, and soon we were looking into two cups of "gooey Caramel, real fudge brownie pieces and choco chunks blended with creamy vanilla soft serve."  Let me break it down for you.

Awful iPod picture quality ahoy!

Dairy Queen's "creamy soft serve" (which I believe is probably a combination of iced milk and edible oil product), served as a vector for what on first inspection seemed to be only chocolate shards and brownie chunks.  I consulted the class list for the Blizzard of the Month again, and noted that perhaps someone was skipping.  Visibly, the caramel was not in attendance.  As I crunched into my first spoonful however, I was pleased to enjoy the texture of the breaking chocolate shards as well as the caramel-infused vanilla soft serve.  No one was skipping after all - the caramel was simply hiding amongst his peers.

I would be lying if I didn't mention that this was actually our second offense with this particular Blizzard, having sampled it earlier in the month before deciding to create our ice cream blog.  The first time, we recall being rather disappointed with the lack of caramel.  Today we were happy to discover satisfactory caramel levels.  Optimum caramel levels might be achieved through less blending of the Blizzard, but we understand that this would result in the creation of other flaws.  The brownie pieces were flavourful, chewy, and fudge-like, sometimes surrounded by a pocket of caramel.  I have the feeling that this constitutes the Ooey Gooey referred to in the Blizzard's name.  The chocolate shards, although they were probably on the synthetic end of the chocolate spectrum, were very satisfying in texture and taste: they gave the Blizzard a delightful crunch to compliment the sugary rich brownie pieces.  Perhaps a little sweet for some palates, Dairy Queen's Ooey Gooey Caramel Brownie delivers just what it offers.  We drove home in a sugary haze.

Recomend to a Friend? Aaaw Yeeah

Repurchase: J + B - already did