Review: Haagen Dazs "Coffee" Ice Cream

Everyone has a favourite go-to product, be it a specific variety of shampoo, a tried-and-tested laundry detergent, or your favourite brand of shoes. When it comes to ice cream, my go-to flavour over the years has always been Haagen Dazs Coffee ice cream. Truthfully, my go-to is actually the half fat version of this flavour, but since I moved away from Vancouver I have not been able to find it in a local grocery store. Haagen Dazs really has done a great job making the half-fat version almost indistinguishable from the full-fat.

While I cannot drink coffee more than once in a while because it does not agree with me, I really love the flavour of it, and this flavour is captured perfectly by Haagen Dazs in their coffee ice cream. This is an uncomplicated product that doesn't try to do too much, and everything it does do is done to an exceptionally high standard. With only five ingredients, this ice cream does not mess around with mix-ins, sauces, or swirls. It is the ideal balance of coffee, cream, and sugar, all put together with a texture that is velvety smooth and creamy (seriously, the texture of this is just divine).

The reason there is no photo of the ice cream itself? I couldn't stop eating it before I could get around to taking a picture! It really is a struggle for me not to polish off the full 500ml in one sitting. Haagen Dazs is pricey, yes, but for this flavour I would gladly pay double. This is simply coffee, perfected.

Recommend to a friend? Heck yes

Repurchase? As long as they make it!

Review: Avalon Dairy Certified Organic "Mocha Fudge" Ice Cream

Those readers who are in BC know that things are tense right now between BC public school teachers and the provincial government. Without getting political, we at Two Girls, One Scoop would just like to say that we love teachers. And so we would like to dedicate this review to the teachers in our lives (and there are a LOT).

But which flavour to choose to reflect the educators we know? Sure, we could go traditional and do something apple-related, but when was the last time any kid put an apple on a teacher's desk? Finally, we realized that most teachers would not be able to get through all their lessons, prep, marking, and extra-curriculars without coffee. And so we present to you, teachers and non-teachers alike, this review of Avalon Dairy's Certified Organic Mocha Fudge ice cream!

For British Columbians, especially those in the south, Avalon Dairy has been a mainstay for over 100 years. They take a very traditional approach and still package and deliver their milk in glass bottles. While they take dairy products seriously, milk is their big seller and their ice cream is distinctly hard to find. I was lucky enough to find a very small selection of their ice creams at the local Fairway Market, and snagged the last Mocha Fudge.

After reading through the ingredients, I can confirm that everything in this ice cream is indeed certified organic, so for those of you that take organics seriously, this may be an option to pursue (particularly since a lot of the organic frozen desserts around here tend to be non-dairy). This product also calls itself "premium ice cream" and carries a price tag to match: a whopping $9.99!! Will it live up to the quality implied by both the label and price?

The flavour of the ice cream itself is a well-balanced coffee flavour that is neither too strong nor too sweet, and tastes natural. I was expecting the ice cream to have both coffee and chocolate flavours, as mocha would normally have, but it seems they are kept separate in this case. The fudge swirl is also a good level of sweetness, but it has that sort of flat, syrupy taste that you often find in chocolate soy frozen desserts. It's not bad, but it's not that great either. Kind of meh. I feel like the coffee would have stood up well on its own.

While the flavour is fine, the texture of this particular pint was not pleasant. Again, like a non-dairy dessert or a low-fat ice cream, this has a very crystallized consistency. Now, there could be several reasons for this, and I tend to believe that, because of the price tag and lack of a big brand name, this container may have sat around in the grocery store freezer for a LONG time, probably near the door, which is continually getting opened, thus messing with the consistency of the temperature. This may have led to the crystallization of water within the ice cream. However, you would think that a "premium" ice cream such as this would have a high enough fat content that this could be avoided for a most part. Overall, the texture made this experience a bit of a disappointment.

Recommend to a friend? If the texture was improved, and if you are a die-hard organic food purchaser, this might be something to consider?

Repurchase? No - the price tag was too rich, and the product not rich enough.

Review: Ben and Jerry's "Milk and Cookies" Ice Cream

After seeing some rave reviews about this product on other blogs and websites, I was pretty excited to give this Ben and Jerry's flavour a try. And I was certainly not disappointed. This stuff is like cookies n' cream on steroids!

The part I enjoyed most was the dark cookie “swirl” which felt to me like a ribbon of crushed up oreo cookie pieces. It had a nice crunchy texture and pleasingly chocolatey taste to it, and it made a nice contrast to the chewier pieces of chocolate chip cookie dough. The cookie dough pieces had a good flavour that pervaded through most of the ice cream, and it really did remind me of raw cookie dough – and since I spent a lot of time eating raw cookie dough when I worked in a bakery at a grocery store chain that will remain nameless, I have a pretty solid reference point. :) Because the cookie elements of this product were fairly sweet, I also appreciated that the vanilla ice cream provided a cool and refreshing “neutral” background.

Overall, I liked this flavour a lot. It had a really nice balance of flavours, textures, and sugar levels, and I think it's a really interesting and successful take on a cookies n cream/cookie dough hybrid.

Recommend to a friend? Definitely

Repurchase? Yes – this one is worth the price tag

Review: The Udder Guy's "Wild Blackberry" Ice Cream

Back when we tried The Udder Guy's Roasted Coconut flavour, we were so impressed that we couldn't wait to sample another one of these locally-made concoctions. But what to choose? I was leaning heavily toward the coffee flavour, but J and I decided to go for the Wild Blackberry flavour, as it seems even more local, and at the time of our tasting the last blackberries were still just barely pickable (and J made sure to sample them from the bush by our driveway whenever she had the opportunity).

That little anecdote should give you some idea of how long ago we actually tested this ice cream! OK, so this review has been many months in the making, and the blackberry bushes now would be lucky to even have any leaves on them, but time has not altered out opinion of this Cowichan Bay product!

Do not adjust your monitor! Yes, this is exactly how pale this ice cream was: almost grey. We were really hoping for a bit more colour, to give this ice cream a real punch, but it looks about as exciting as the DMV. The colour problem is really due to not enough fruit, and unfortunately this problem persisted to the flavour of the ice cream as well.

The Udder Guy, we are disappointed! When we read "Wild Blackberry" on the label, we expected to find more than one or two in our bowls! Yes, fruit is expensive, and wild blackberries, or blackberries or any variety really, would be difficult to procure in bulk. But this ice cream also carries a premium price tag, and one expects a flavour to match. Instead we got a flavour that actually tasted more like blueberry than blackberry. And even then, it was more like "blueberry flavour" than actual blueberries. If you've ever gotten Special K blueberry flavour, or had granola with little dried blueberries in it....that is what this tastes like. Again, we were really disappointed.

In order to compete with brands like Haagen Dazs - which it does in this market, as it shares a similar container size and price - the quality has to be the same, if not better. The Roasted Coconut flavour was bomb, but this really falls flat. Rather than capturing the essence of Vancouver Island blackberries, this product, in both colour and flavour, makes you feel more like you're eating blueberry wallpaper paste.

Recommend to a friend? Not sure who would enjoy this. Maybe people who like really bland things...
Repurchase? No

Review: Island Farms "Original Moose Tracks" Ice Cream

After all this time we're super behind on reviews and the queue of products seems to be a mile long. However, I feel that it's about time 2G1S did a review of one of my favourites: Islands Farms Original Moose Tracks Ice Cream.

It's no secret that I love this stuff. As you may have gathered from the reviews of Lucerne's Nuttin' Better and Haagen Dazs Chocolate Peanut Butter, I kind of like peanut butter and chocolate. A lot. A lot. And this product is the beginning of my love affair with that combo in ice cream form. Now, Moose Tracks is not an Island Farms creation by any means, but here in BC, it is marketed under this brand. And there are now a boatload of different Moose Tracks varieties and flavours to choose from. However, the original will always be my favourite: awesome in its purest form.

This product consists of "vanilla flavoured ice cream with peanut butter cups and famous Moose Tracks fudge".  In my most recent carton, some of the fudge was overblended with the ice cream in places, resulting in spots that looked like they contained chocolate ice cream as well (as you can see in the photo). The fudge ribbon (for lack of a better term) is richly chocolatey and sweet (but not overpowering), melts easily in your mouth, and it is balanced well by the vanilla. The peanut butter cups are small, but there is a generous distribution of them, so the peanut butter flavour is never lacking. Overall, this is a well-done, tried-and-true variation on the peanut butter and chocolate theme that never fails to please in this neck of the woods!


Recommend to a friend? Absolutely
Repurchase? Of course - this will always be a delicious standby

Review: Ben and Jerry's "Half Baked"

You know what sucks? Getting swamped in school work and planning and having to put blog reviews on the back burner for a week. You know what's awesome? One of the local grocery stores having Ben and Jerry's ice cream on sale for half price. With the financial burden of purchasing this brand lightened somewhat, I can finally get down to trying some new flavours – rejoice!

The first one I decided to sample was Ben and Jerry's Half Baked, a combination of vanilla and chocolate ice creams with cookie dough and brownie pieces mixed in. I was pretty optimistic about this one heading in, so I have to say that I'm a bit disappointed overall. The price of having high standards, I guess?

First things first, I really loved about 80% of this product. Both the chocolate and vanilla ice creams were of Ben and Jerry's usual excellent quality (the conclusion I've come to is that the vanilla we experienced in If I Had 1,000,000 Flavours was, indeed, a fluke), and I particularly enjoyed the flavour of the vanilla. The brownie pieces were very fudgey and had the nice texture of the slightly underdone brownie that is soft and gooey and oozes chocolate.

However, the other 20% of the ice cream was the cookie dough, and I found it to be a bit of a let down. Now, we tried their cookie dough flavour ice cream before and the cookie dough in that product, though it did freeze more solidly than we would have liked, was quite good. The cookie dough in this carton of Half Baked was not just hard, it was dry and crumbly, and overall just not very nice. I found myself trying to avoid the cookie dough and, when it did end up on my spoon, chew through it as fast as possible just to get it over with. Which doesn't make a lot of sense to me, since they should be using the same stuff for both flavours, no? If this is another “fluke” inconsistency, then Ben and Jerry's seriously need to look at some quality control!

Recommend to a friend? The non-cookie dough parts of this were great, and if the texture of the dough was improved I would recommend this. As it is, I'm not sure I could justify telling someone to pay full price for this.

Repurchase? As per the comments above, if the dough was better, yes. Otherwise, no.

Review: Lucerne "Nuttin' Better" Ice Cream

It's really disappointing to me that there are no Safeways within a reasonable driving distance, because their house brand, Lucerne, makes some really unique ice cream flavours. In fact, their seasonal Christmas flavours are so unique I may have to take a road trip to get my hands on some of them for testing. However, one of my friends, K, lives much closer to a Safeway and was nice enough to purchase a box of Lucerne ice cream for us to try. Since K is a master of puns, it was only appropriate that she select Nuttin' Better, vanilla ice cream with a peanut butter ribbon and chocolate flakes.

The top layer of Nuttin' Better - where's the peanut butter?

Holy mother of legumes, batman! Peanut butter in droves!

While I would normally sample ice cream in small custard cup sized bowls to avoid overdoing it, at K's house they don't mess around when it comes to size: it's go big or go home! Having to eat such a big bowl of ice cream might have been a problem if it had been mediocre, but this was certainly not the case here. Not only was the vanilla ice cream pleasing in both taste and texture, and the chocolate very tasty as well, the peanut butter swirl was pretty bomb. Lucerne was very generous with the swirl, and it was not hard to find large deposits of peanut butter in every serving. Basically the peanut butter seemed like something you might actually be inclined to spread on your toast, and it had a very nice balance between sweet and salty which worked well with the vanilla. K, her boyfriend, and I all enjoyed this selection and despite the bowl size I think we all went back for seconds...

Recommend to a friend? Yes: if you are a peanut butter fan, you will be pleased by the generous amount of peanut butter in this selection – it definitely doesn't take a back seat!

Repurchase? Yes, if I am ever in the vicinity of a Safeway!

Review: President's Choice “Loads of Pecan Butter Tart” Ice Cream

J and I have both finished the classroom portion of our university program, and are currently in the practical part. While it's nice to be out of the stuffy university building, that does mean that J has moved back to her home further north to do her practical segment up there, and that means that our ice cream reviews will no longer be done together. But never fear! We will still be reviewing many a treat, just not both of us on the same one. Without any further review, here is the 2G1S review of another President's Choice product, Loads of Pecan Butter Tart ice cream.

Since we reviewed President's Choice's Pumpkin Pie ice cream, it has become our most viewed post, with many people coming to view this blog by googling the product...and it's a good thing too, because we wouldn't want people to miss out on something as awesomely delicious as PC Pumpkin Pie ice cream was. I was excited, therefore, to review a second pastry-inspired ice cream in President's Choice “Loads of Pecan Butter Tart”, one of the selections in their “loads of” series that focuses on ice creams with “loads of” mix-ins. I love butter tarts, as they have strong associations for me with cold weather and the spirit of giving, and with the weather getting nastier by the day it only seemed appropriate to give myself the gift of butter tarts in ice cream form.

This product advertises itself as “yummy butter tart flavoured ripple ice cream, positively packed with butter tart pieces and praline pecans”. Normally I like to have raisins in my butter tarts, but it is totally understandable that they were not included in this mix. The ice cream itself is light brown in colour and while there don't appear to be too many mix-ins on the surface, they are plentiful once you get past the first layer. Now, butter tarts are a sugary, sugary beast, so I was initially a bit concerned that this ice cream would be too sweet to handle. I guess there's only one way to find out, so let the taste testing begin!

Oh. My. Word.

This stuff is just... amazing. In fact, I kind of don't want to stop eating it.

First off, this isn't nearly as sweet as I anticipated it might be. At first I thought the ice cream base was almost maple flavoured, but after a moment or so I realized that what I was tasting was a rich brown sugar flavour and that it was surprisingly well-balanced in terms of sweetness. Well played, PC. Your product development team saw the potential pitfall and made it a non-issue. The praline pecans are fairly small but well distributed, and they give a nice nutty, earthy flavour to the whole thing which gives it some added depth. PC wasn't lying when they named this thing: there is literally loads of tart pastry pieces. Again, they are not very sweet, and they're a bit crunchy. Overall, they remind me a bit of commercial shortbread, and they work really, really well with the brown sugar ice cream base.

This whole concoction just meshes together so well. The flavours are well balanced, the sugar is just the right amount, the differences in texture are great, and the overall feeling is one of ice cream nirvana. Oddly enough, I never did find the “rippled” part of the ice cream listed in the description, but whatever it was supposed to be, it was either mixed in enough to where the flavour melded with the ice cream, or it wasn't necessary to begin with. President's Choice got this one so, so right, and if you have access to this brand, you should make a point to try this out.

Recommend to a friend? Yes! What are you waiting for? Get in your car and drive to your nearest Superstore or Extra Foods!

Repurchase? Yes x 1,000,000! (got J to try this, and she is also a big fan)

Review: Island Farms "Green Tea" Ice Cream

Today's review comes with the help of one of our classmates who helped us out with a couple of tastings, and since she is half Filipino (let's call her Asian Girl...AG for short), perhaps it's appropriate that we review one of Island Farms' Asian-inspired classic flavours, Green Tea ice cream. ;)

It occurred to me after I recycled the container that this photo doesn't actually show the flavour. Fail.

Now, we recently reviewed Haagen Dazs's take on green tea and we were somewhat disappointed by the subtlety of its green tea flavour. That is to say, we could barely taste the tea underneath the vanilla. So naturally we're curious to see how this one compares. The most obvious difference, when we removed the lid, is the colour. Unlike the washed out colour of Haagen Dazs, this thing is like...electric green. Not quite glow in the dark, and this picture doesn't do it justice, but it is green. Definitely looks like matcha powder, so if this stuff doesn't pack some serious green tea punch, something is wrong. (It's worth noting that on subsequent openings of the container, the ice cream had browned a bit in colour...which I think is actually good because it suggests that the colour is due to organic elements, not food dye)

Well, it's definitely matcha. AG commented that it tastes more like a Booster Juice matcha shot than actual ice cream, and added that her desire to try a "weird" flavour with us had been fulfilled by this product because it was totally weird. It does have a very strong tea flavour, so if you were hoping to be gently eased into the realm of green tea you'll be in for a bit of a shock; it's the complete other end of the spectrum from the Haagen Dazs we tried. While AG thought it was disgusting, finding it too earthy and that it "tastes like a face mask," J loved it, proclaiming that it is the only ice cream she has had that can truly call itself "green tea" because it actually has real green tea flavour. To her, if you don't like this ice cream, you probably don't like real green tea much.

As for me, I'm kind of neutral on it. The flavour is good, but I only really enjoy it for the first few bites before I get turned off. I think the issue is actually less about the taste and more about the mouth feel of this stuff. To me, it's too high fat, too creamy, for a tea ice cream. Creamy richness goes well with coffee flavours, but I feel like it's way too much for tea. I like green tea a lot, but I'm not sure it fits with a full fat ice cream like this. It's weird because I didn't feel this way about the Haagen Dazs one, but maybe that's because the dominant flavour there wasn't actually green tea.

However...

 When I was trying to finish off the rest of the container, I mixed this ice cream with some 1% milk in the blender to make a green tea milkshake. By diluting the flavour somewhat, as well as the fat content, this product was much more enjoyable. So if you're looking to make like a green tea smoothie/milkshake, this ice cream plus a low fat milk makes a pretty tasty concoction.

 Recommend to a friend? If you really like green tea, you may be a fan of this Island Farms endeavour. But you really have to like it.
Repurchase? J: Yes B: No, wouldn't be worth it for me.

Review: Ben and Jerry's "If I Had 1,000,000 Flavours" Ice Cream

As proud Canadians, we were excited to get our hands on this creation by Ben and Jerry's: If I Had 1,000,000 Flavours. Note the "u" in "flavours"! This is one of several Ben and Jerry's ice creams based on songs or bands, and is inspired by the Barenaked Ladies song "If I Had A Million Dollars". True, BNL has had some scandal over the past couple of years, but that doesn't mean we can't enjoy the song that still frequents the muzak of grocery stores everywhere. Especially when it comes in ice cream form.

Disappointingly, this ice cream does not literally contain 1,000,00 flavours, but I supposed that would have been extremely hard to fit into one carton. It's a "collision of chocolate & vanilla ice creams mixed with chocolate-covered toffee, white chocolate chunks, peanut butter cups, and chocolate-covered almonds." It's 999,994 flavours short of a million, but it still sounds delicious and does give more variety than the average pint.

We divided the cartoon between us and dug in to see just how many flavours we could find. There was a fairly even distribution of chocolate and vanilla ice creams, and the chocolate was quite nice. The vanilla tasted OK but it had this weird gritty texture to it. I didn't notice it at first, but once J called my attention to it, it was pretty hard to ignore. It wasn't ice crystals or mix-ins. It was almost...dusty feeling and not at all pleasant. And it was only present in the vanilla for some reason.

In the battle of penny VS peanut butter cup, the peanut butter cup takes home the prize!

As for the mix-ins, Ben and Jerry's did not skimp, especially on the peanut butter cups. Those suckers were HUGE. The white chocolate chunks were also a decent size, and while we found very few chocolate-covered almonds, they were a nice size. J swears she found a chocolate covered peanut in hers, not something listed in the ingredients. However, neither of us were able to find any toffee in either of our bowls. Overall, we felt like the distribution was more like "If I Had 1,000,000 Peanut Butter Cups" than "1,000,000 Flavours".

Our overall feeling on this flavour is that is was good but it felt more like variations on the theme of chocolate, rather than the true mix that is suggested by the name. We love peanut butter cups, and chocolate, but would have loved even more the addition of something like cookie pieces, caramel, nuts, coconut... And the dusty, gritty texture of the vanilla was really hard to ignore. Perhaps having a more even distribution of mix-ins would've made this a more exciting experience (and actually having some toffee would have been nice!)

There is also a nice article written about the band's reaction to the release of this flavour.

Recommend to a friend? Yes, especially if you consider yourself to be a chocoholic. We think that the texture issue with the vanilla was a freak occurrence, but if it was not, then we would be much more hesitant to recommend this.
Repurchase? J: If the texture of the vanilla was improved, yes. B: Since this ice cream was so much about the peanut butter cups, at least in our pint, I would be inclined to get Island Farms "Moose Tracks" instead and get more ice cream for my money.

Review: Haagen Dazs "Green Tea & Honey Vanilla" Ice Cream

As mentioned before, when my sister came over for Thanksgiving, we had initially intended to find a carton of Island Farms green tea flavour ice cream to review, but were unable to locate any (as we discovered a week and a half later, we had neglected to visit the one grocery store in town that carried it...review upcoming!). Even after my sister had gone home, J and I still had a desire to try something frozen and green tea, so we picked up a container of Haagen Dazs Green Tea & Honey Vanilla, which proclaimed itself to be "new".

We were a bit skeptical at first: both of us like green tea, especially J who is much more of a tea connoisseur and who has had a lot of green tea during her time in Japan. We weren't entirely sure how the vanilla and honey flavours were going to compliment the flavour of green tea. I like tea lattes and tea mistos as much as the next commercial coffee shop addict, but green tea was one I tended to stay away from because it can easily be botched (at least in my experience). Upon opening, we found a very pale green ice cream that was easily divided between the pair of us.

Like almost all Haagen Dazs ice creams, this one is simple and gets right to the point. In this case, however, it kind of gets to the point in reverse order.  By that we mean that the flavours dominate in the reverse order of how they are listed on the package. While vanilla is listed last, we found this to be the most dominant flavour, with the honey coming in to sweeten it nicely (although to be fair, this ice cream contains both sugar and honey and while J said she could taste the honey, all I could taste was "sweet" and nothing discernibly honey-like). In fact, if you hadn't told us what this ice cream was called, and if we ignored the colour, I think both of us would have called it a funny-tasting vanilla ice cream. The green tea is there. Kinda. If you're really looking for it, you can taste it, but otherwise it is mostly present as an aftertaste, or as a very subtle tea-like note at the end. Basically, this ice cream is vanilla infused with green tea, rather than being a straight-up green tea ice cream. So I guess, in a way, it's more complex than we originally thought?

Recommend to a friend? If you are expecting in-your-face green tea flavour, you will be disappointed. However, if you want to experience a light and non-threatening variation on green tea, you will probably enjoy this.
Repurchase? J: Maybe. It's a good ice cream, but it doesn't deliver the green tea taste I was hoping for. B: It wouldn't be first on my list, but I enjoyed this. Would repurchase if I was in the mood.

Review: Purdy's "Hedgehog" Ice Cream

If you like to browse entries by "labels" or "tags", or if you ever wondered where you can find these products for yourself, you will be pleased to know that we have added tags to all of our entries showing where we purchased the ice creams. Sometimes the point of purchase is due to a sale or discount, proximity, or lack of availability at other stores - we are not affiliated with any of the grocery stores where we buy ice cream. Some of the products are available at multiple grocery chains - we are simply letting you know where we found them so that you might be able to find them on your own.

As big fans of Purdy's chocolates, we were excited to try their line of ice creams available in BC grocery stores, produced by Island Farms. The flavours include milk chocolate, sweet georgia browns, mint meltie, peanut butter, and hedgehog, the flavour we decided to sample. Not only do we like chocolate hedgehogs, but J used to own a couple of hedgehogs as pets (and was quite excited about them).

This is a simple ice cream. It doesn't waste time with mix-ins or textural variations. This stuff is exactly what it proclaims to be: hedgehog ice cream. It tastes just like hedgehog chocolate filling in frozen form. It's an extremely rich mix of milk chocolate and hazelnut, with a very smooth, almost "thick" texture. There isn't much more to say: this taste isn't just a good tribute, it's exactly like the real thing. It just needs to be in small servings since, like we said, it's very, very rich.

Recommend to a friend? If you like hedgehogs, you will love this ice cream. It's like eating a hedgehog chocolate.
Repurchase? J + B: Absolutely, especially for times when we have a real chocolate craving.

Review: President's Choice "Pink Lemonade"

 Our first pink ice cream selection in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month:

The weather is starting to turn chilly, so we decided we wanted a little taste of summer to boost our spirits. What better way to do this than sampling pink lemonade in ice cream form, one of the flavours in the President's Choice ice cream shop line? And yes, it's an ice cream - not a sorbet, a sherbet, or a gelato, an ice cream. Maybe a bit odd for a citrus flavour...but we're curious to see how President's Choice makes this work!

The things you learn when you're blogging: pink lemonade is apparently the same as regular lemonade, except that it is dyed with pink food colouring to sometimes indicate that it is somewhat sweeter. It can also, however, be dyed with natural substances such as grenadine and cranberry juice which will not only sweeten it but also alter the flavour slightly. Thanks wikipedia! The colour of this ice cream is, indeed, pink, almost like a bubblegum or cotton candy pink. It was a bit weird to be eating a citrus dessert of this colour, but not really a big deal. This ice cream was easy to scoop out and almost had a "fluffy" texture, like it had been whipped or something.

In terms of taste, the closest comparison is probably lemon yogurt. J regularly buys lemon yogurt to eat with breakfast or as a snack, so it's a taste we were both familiar with already. Otherwise, the combination of citrus and dairy might have been a bit off-putting. Normally lemon-flavoured frozen desserts take the form of a sorbet or a gelato, which lets the taste of the lemon juice shine through uninhibited - such desserts have a really clean and refreshing flavour. The flavour of PC pink lemonade was refreshing in its own way, but the dairy aspect gave it a certain depth or richness that you wouldn't find in a gelato. It almost tones down the lemon flavour, the way that would add sour cream to a spicy salsa to balance the flavours. If you are expecting the same experience you would get with a lemon gelato or sorbet, you will be initially thrown off when you taste this product, but overall it is a pleasant ice cream.

Recommend to a friend? If you like lemon yogurt, you will most likely enjoy this. This flavour won't be for everyone, but it adds an innovative richness to the array of currently available citrus frozen desserts.
Repurchase? J: Absolutely B: Maybe. I feel like I might be more inclined to purchase lemon yogurt if I were craving this flavour, as I am more partial to the clean, fresh taste you would get in a citrus gelato. But I certainly wouldn't blacklist this one.

Review: Haagen Dazs "Strawberry"

Our final Haagen Dazs flavour review is of a more traditional ice cream flavour: Strawberry. The thing is...J and I don't actually like strawberry ice cream. I mean, if it's there, maybe we'll eat it, but it's definitely not something either of us would go out of our way to buy. There is so much that you can do wrong with strawberry that it can be a pretty risky venture. But we wanted to challenge ourselves, so strawberry Haagen Dazs it is!

 Under the lid and protective seal, Haagen Dazs has given us a pale pink ice cream with visible chunks of strawberry (not totally clear in this shot, but they're just beneath the surface) and strawberry seeds. Nice to see some actual fruit in there, as many brands of strawberry ice cream tend to be a plain ice cream base with a strawberry flavoured syrup blended in. This results in an artificial taste that often has no resemblance to actual strawberries, and is one of the reasons J and I generally stay away from strawberry ice cream.

This ice cream was much firmer than both the chocolate peanut butter and dulce de leche flavours, but it is still creamy in texture and taste. There is a gentle strawberry flavour to the ice cream, that essentially tastes like berries and cream...which, after consulting the short ingredient list, is essentially what it is. The chunks of strawberry add a nice difference in texture with a burst of fresh flavour and a subtle tartness. We greatly appreciate that this ice cream clearly, both visibly and flavour-wise, has actual fruit in it.

So was Haagen Dazs able to turn us over to the "dark side" of strawberry ice cream? While it is probably the best example of strawberry ice cream either of us has tasted, we are still not sold on this particular flavour. It's nothing against Haagen Dazs, it's just not a flavour combo we're crazy about. We will say this, though: if we had to choose a strawberry ice cream to eat, it would be this one.

Recommend to a friend? If you like strawberry ice cream, then this flavour comes exactly as advertised. Strawberry fans will rejoice!
Repurchase? J + B: It does a good job of capturing "strawberry" in ice cream form, but it is still not for us. Would not repurchase based on personal taste.

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.

Review: Haagen Dazs "Chocolate Peanut Butter"

Haagen Dazs ice creams... generally delicious and high quality, but damn are they expensive! So are we ever pleased that they are available in individually sized cups - at 3/$5, J and I can sample and review multiple flavours without totally breaking the bank (not to mention that it relieves the pressure of having to finish off a full carton for each flavour!)

The first in our line up of Haagen Dazs flavours for review is Chocolate Peanut Butter. Chocolate and peanut butter has got to be one of the most iconic combinations of all time. It's right up there with bacon and cheeseburger! OK, J is a vegetarian, so maybe they're not that comparable. But chocolate and peanut butter are definitely a winning pair. Unless you have peanut allergies...Well, darn.

Once we got the lid off (which was actually quite a challenge, though it did reveal the tiny spoon that was included in the container), we found a rich chocolate ice cream with peanut butter pockets throughout. It was extremely hard to see the peanut butter, even when digging through the ice cream, but you could definitely notice it once you were actually eating. The texture of the peanut butter in the ice cream is a bit waxy at first, but once it warms up, it's smooth like just peanut butter from a jar.

I must admit that when I think of chocolate and peanut butter, I think of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. The peanut butter in the candy is a bit salty and somewhat gritty because it has some coarsely ground peanuts in it. So as a result, I was expecting something similar from the peanut butter in this ice cream. However, the peanut butter in Haagen Dazs is, as J put it, essentially what you would expect if you were getting Kraft peanut butter from a jar. It's smooth and tastes mostly like roasted peanut, rather than added sugar or salt. I think I would have liked it to be a little saltier, just for the contrast with the sweetness of the ice cream, but J appreciated that it didn't conform to my preconceived notion of what chocolate and peanut butter should be. And I do have to agree, this is an original and purist take on chocolate-peanut butter, not something trying to imitate the classic candy.

Recommend to a friend? Yes
Repurchase? J + B: Yes

Review: The Udder Guy's "Roasted Coconut" Ice Cream

Today we bring you a review of an ice cream we actually had to purchase twice because somebody decided to eat half of the container without taking any photos. These things happen when you're dead tired and crave ice cream. Especially when that ice cream is The Udder Guy's Roasted Coconut, made by a local company that operates out of Cowichan Bay, Vancouver Island.

You know an ice cream manufacturer is grassroots when they don't have different cartons for each flavour. And the carton design looks like it might have been a high school art project. And the flavour is put on the rim of the lid on a sticker. And it's written in Comic Sans MS (my least favourite font of all time). But we'll try not to hold it against them. After all, it's what's inside that counts.

Hard to tell much from this photo, but basically what we have is a yellowy-white ice cream with bits of shredded and roasted coconut throughout (and not in skimpy amounts either). According to The Udder Guy's website, "We husk, shred and roast all our own coconut to avoid commercial shredded coconut, which often contains sodium meta-bisulphate, the most highly regulated additive in Canada. This product is banned in many parts of the world. (It is used to clean equipment in brewing companies.)" We don't really know if this is actually a common concern with commercially available shredded coconut, but if someone is willing to do that much work with their own coconuts, we're willing to take their word for it. It's times like this that I wish I had paid better attention in that food science class... 

So is the taste of this flavour enough to make us willing to overlook the less-than-flashy carton design? Heck yes it is!

This ice cream is smooth and creamy and doesn't feel or taste like it has a ton of chemicals in it, which is refreshing. The ice cream base has a nice, sweet coconut flavour to it that isn't TOO sweet or overpowering. It reminds me a bit of coconut extract rather than eating actual coconut. The coconut shreds are well toasted so the flavour really comes out, and you can tell that, unlike a lot of commercially available shredded coconut, it is not sweetened. Which is nice, because the sweetness of the ice cream itself is sufficient. We both really, really liked it. What this ice cream really tastes like is MORE, which definitely made having to purchase it twice easy to swallow!

Recommend to a friend? Definitely. This would pair well with a variety of desserts, and unless you hate coconut, you will probably love this. Don't shy away from the basic-looking carton: this stuff is dynamite!
Repurchase? J + B: Already have, and would again. Can't wait to try the other flavours by this local company!

Review: Chapman's "Hokey Pokey" Ice Cream

First off, we'd like to give a big shout out to Dubba from On Second Scoop - thanks to him linking our blog in one of his posts, we got a huge influx of traffic, and this blog has now been viewed by people in seven different countries! Wow, talk about the power of networking! If you are unfamiliar with his blog, go check it out, it's great!

On to today's review of Chapman's "Hokey Pokey", one of their premium label ice creams, and if you're wondering what the name could possibly mean, Chapman's describes it as "toffee ice cream with chocolatey covered sponge toffee pieces and a milk chocolate ribbon." But will the flavour have us wanting to do the dance of the same name? Well that remains to be seen...

You put your right foot in...

You take your right foot out...

OK, so upon opening this guy up, it looks pretty unimpressive. We can see a lot of toffee ice cream, approximately three little chocolatey covered (insert obligatory comment about how it's not real chocolate here) sponge toffee pieces, and the beginnings of that milk chocolate swirl. Doesn't look promising, but I think we have learned that the top layer can be deceiving.

...and you shake it all about!

Alright, that's what I'm talkin' about! Much better distribution further down! I appreciate that the milk chocolate swirl seems to be mostly in the middle, because if you don't like it all that much, you have the option of eating around it. Probably won't give you the best idea of what Hokey Pokey is all about (OK, I swear, I'm almost done on the awful hokey pokey references...), but it's nice to have that flexibility.

Once we dug in and started to eat this ice cream, it became clear what Hokey Pokey is all about: sponge toffee. It says "toffee" flavoured ice cream on the label, but that's a pretty broad flavour. I mean you could have butter toffee, English toffee, molasses toffee... But this flavour is unmistakeably the rich caramelized sugar taste of sponge toffee. I remember actually exclaiming "Dude, this tastes like sponge toffee!" in excitement before I remembered that that was the whole idea. The texture of the ice cream is creamy, and very soft, which seems to be a trend among Chapman's products.

The picture on the bucket is a bit misleading in terms of the chocolatey covered sponge toffee pieces. In the photo they appear to be mostly sponge toffee, whereas in the actual ice cream they are overwhelmingly chocolatey coating. OK, let's be fair, it was inconsistent. But typically if you were getting a larger piece, it was because there was more chocolatey coating, not because you'd be getting more sponge toffee. To give an idea of how big the average piece of toffee was, here is a (very blurry) penny comparison.

Picture-taking skills of FAIL

The milk chocolate swirl is very, very sweet. Both J and I sampled this ice cream numerous times before this review was written (because it's a 2L bucket, and we can only eat so fast!), and each time we had a slightly different opinion. And each time, that opinion correlated with how sweet we thought this product was. When you don't get a ton of swirl in your serving, you get the nice flavour of the ice cream with the occasional crunch of the chocolatey covered toffee bits, and the sugar is manageable. When you get a lot of swirl, this stuff is a diabetes in a cup. Neither of us have a huge sweet tooth, but we can still appreciate fairly sweet things. Depending on the ice cream-to-swirl ratio you receive, Hokey Pokey can be complete sugar overkill.

On our last sampling, J and I were ready to give this ice cream a total pass because of how sweet it was. But after finishing the last of it this morning (which had less of the swirl), I'm inclined to go easier on it. I don't know, maybe my taste buds are deader in the morning or something, but with mostly just the ice cream and sponge toffee bits, it wasn't half bad.

Recommend to a friend? If you like sponge toffee, definitely. If you're not sure, but you like to finish your sugary treats by entering into a diabetic coma, then also definitely. If you have a real sweet tooth, this ice cream will have you dancing the hokey pokey. Otherwise, it may not be your best bet.
Repurchase? J: No B: No, it was too much for us.