The N.C. Double Scoop Round Of 64, Flight 3: Write-Ups
Confused?Click here. To vote, click here.
1 Strawberry vs. 16 bacon. Bacon ice cream isn’t appetizing to me — even if I could eat it (can’t; vegequarian), I’d probably pass, because it just sounds way too fatty.Strawberry all the way.
8 Rainforest Crunch vs. 9 pistachio. Tough one.Rainforest Crunch is a retired flavor, which may hurt its chances, but on the other hand many people despise pistachio.I’m not one of them, so I’m pulling the lever for pistash, but RC probably pulls it out.
5 Lime sherbet vs. 12 coconut. Huh.Presented with them both, I want to swirl them together and dunk a scoop of the combo into a vodka tonic, but which one is going to win?I’d vote coconut, but people who hate coconut fucking hate coconut.Close call; lime wins, despite being somewhat reminiscent of a trip to the senior center.
4 Neapolitan vs. 13 bubble gum. Anyone else remember when bubble gum debuted at Baskin Robbins?Talk about perfect kid-demo targeting!
But then it kind of sucked, right?The ice cream base didn’t taste all that good, and the bubble gum ranked just behind the antique shit in baseball-card packs in terms of chewability.And how the hell did they expect you to save it for chewing in the second place?You could either spit out the gum bits and make a gross, shiny pile on a napkin, or you could try to store the bits in your cheeks like a chipmunk.And if you eat the ice cream straight…well, you can’t eat it straight.It’s one of those crazy-sugary flavors that vibrates on a frequency only children can pick up.Neapolitan has its issues — stop bulking out the carton with chocolate, Edy’s! Equal portions of each; we’re not all Homer Simpson, hello! — but nothing approaching the neither-fish-nor-fowl (but sorta foul) 13 seed’s.
6 Rocky Road/heavenly hash vs. 11 ginger (snap). Road/hash is one of those ice cream flavors that I like, but rarely eat, because there’s always another flavor on offer that I like more.The chocolate base they use tends to taste cheap, in my opinion.Also, you’ve got the marshmallow- and/or nut-haters to factor in.It’ll still win, I think, based on wider availability.
3 Peanut butter and chocolate vs. 14 tutti frutti. Tutti frutti contains candied fruit.Unacceptable.In fact, I should have ranked it lower.Like, 28,488th, right behind spider-web ribbon and poostachio.DIE, CANDIED FRUIT.PB&C in a rout.
7 Dulce de leche vs. 10 cheesecake. No idea how this one’s going to go.Neither’s a frequent buy for me — too rich — but any dessert that tries to replicate flan is a friend of mine, so I’ll give dulce the edge.
2 Chocolate chocolate chip vs. 15 honey lavender. I don’t expect an upset here, but honey lavender might make it closer than you’d expect.Some people, myself included, think a little chocolate goes a long way and a lot of chocolate goes too far; I’ll probably vote for the 15 seed.
Tags: food Homer Simpson vegequarianism
Bacon ice cream? SERIOUSLY?
A lot of these, I need to try, but that is so not one of them. Gag.
On an administrative note: we will be doing some prizing, plus the TN store on Glarkware is in the building stages but we’re trying to do some pins real quick — including one with an ice-cream cone that has a tomato in it. So, if you would care to commemorate the NCDS for yourselves, you will be able to do that in various forms.
Bacon ice cream is a signal that as a society we have too much free time on our hands and need to return to the 80-hour work week. Also? I just punched a baby.
I hope said baby was made of candied fruit.
Bacon? I still keep thinking that this is a misprint. Who in the hell thought of this? Why not scrambled eggs or pancakes if we are doing oddball breakfast ice cream.
Oh wait, pancakes and maple syrup ice cream?
If that isn’t an ice cream, it should be! I demand the Ben & Jerry’s or the people of Baskin Robbins to something about this right now!!
I thought I was shocked by the bacon ice cream, but then I remembered that a coworker once offered me a bacon chocolate bar . . . so not so much, now. 7 bucks a bar? I have better things to spend my money on!
Clearly, Glark needs more ice cream. Or fewer babies.
Coconut all the way! Our local does an Almond Joy sundae which is coconut ice cream with almonds and hot fudge and it is a perfectly acceptable alternative to sex. In fact, many times the ice cream is much more satisfying.
I was at a restaurant with my SO & 3 other couples last year, for dessert they had bacon ice cream with maple syrup on a pancake sort of thing. No lie, all the guys were “that’s perfect!” and all the girls were “Ewwww.”
I tried it. Not a fan.
Mmmmmmmmmm bacon ice cream on a fresh homemade waffle! Tis bliss.
Bacon Ice Cream? This actually exists? Really?
Just thinking about it triggers my gag reflex a little.
“…but people who hate coconut fucking hate coconut.”
HATE. Fucking HATE.
Oh, peanut butter and chocolate, how I love you. I want to grow old with you. I want to take leisurely strolls in the evening, walking quietly hand in hand, passing by young couples just starting out who, when they see us, hope that they are as happy when they’ve been together for fifty years.
It exists and since I love to drag my bacon through my maple syrup, I love it. But I also love the bacon chocolate, which is really just chocolate with smoked salt, so there you go.
I think I mentioned this in the comments surrounding the opening N.C. Double Scoop, but there are recipes bouncing around out there for Pecan-Brown-Sugar and Bacon ice cream.
Bacon ice cream? Lawsy. Good thing I read the comments, because I would have thought that anybody voting for bacon-friggin-ice-cream would have just been messing with us.
And, Rachel, if you’re ever in Austin or Houston, you can go to Amy’s Ice Cream and get their Almond Joy ice cream and put hot fudge on it, which is, in my opinion, reason enough to go on living despite the heat in these parts.
I think the non-bacon ice cream people are laboring under a misapprehension that it’s bacon fat made into ice cream.
Here’s what it ACTUALLY is:
Yummy sweet (with a bit of salt) usually vanilla custard-based ice cream with tiny perfect little crispy bits of bacon inside. I mean it may be gross to you still but hey it’s heaven to some of us. :)
While I agree that lime sherbet smacks of the deep recesses of Grandma’s deep freeze, I am strongly in the “fucking hate coconut” camp, so Grandma’s deep freeze it is.
PB & Chocolate was known as “Charlie Brown” at High’s Ice Cream in Hampton VA. Oh man–that was my FAVORITE when I was 8 years old. My birthday treat was to go to see a movie (“Fox and Hounds”?) and two scoops of Charlie Brown. It was my nickname, which was a little weird since I’m a girl, but Peppermint Patty was gross…
I’ve never seen bacon ice cream sold anywhere, but it featured in the Top Chef finale. The judges seemed to like it.
And I like both lime sherbet and coconut ice cream, but I realized I voted for coconut because the “sherbet” entries have a strike against them already. I feel like this contest should be all ice cream. I may be overthinking this.
I’d try it. Also, I couldn’t vote for strawberry out of sympathy for my BFF, who is seriously allergic.
Some really weird match-ups in this flight. A lot of pairings where I seriously had no preference. However, the HaagenDaaz dulce de leche ice cream got me through last summer (grad school and my dog dying), so it got my vote.
I love bacon, so I can get on board with maple syrup and crumbled bacon as delicious sundae toppings for vanilla ice cream. However, bacon “flavored” things remind me too much of “Beggin Strips” dog treats, so I have to say no to the bacon ice cream.
I’m also “meh” on Neapolitan, but I have a total love for ice cream sandwiches, so the photo totally biased me towards Neapolitan.
Pistachio for the win!
As far as breakfast ice cream goes, Ben & Jerry’s makes an excellent Cinnamon Roll. It seems to come and go around these parts, so I have no idea if you can get it all over the place.
If you can find it, it’s a must-try.
However, choosing between ducle de leche and cheesecake is nearly torture for me.
I freely admit to being one of those small-minded people who simply cannot dispassionately evaluate the idea of bacon ice cream, because OH MY GOD GROSS.
If you could guarantee me a candied-fruit-free spumoni, I would be SO THERE. Love the Neapo; would love it even more with pistachio.
@Nomie: I know, right? I had a hard time ranking this flight, because it’s two of my top flavors but then I don’t care much about the others. Except tutti frutti, which is fucki nasti.
tulip: There might be people who immediately thought of bacon fat, but I for one assumed that it’d be some kind of ice cream, probably vanilla, with pieces of bacon (or bacon bits) in it, and although I’m all for dipping the bacon in the maple syrup at breakfast, the idea of bacon ice cream is so repellent to me that it literally triggered my gag reflex just by reading about it.
I worked for a man once whose wife made brownies for him to bring in to the office. Where the recipe called for a half-cup of oil? She didn’t have oil on hand. Now, a lot of people, especially Southerners, pour off and save the bacon fat to use for frying things later. So she DID have solidified bacon grease on hand, and she just scooped out half a cup, heated it up to melt, and added it to the brownie mix.
The worst part was, the chocolate smell of the brownies was stronger than the bacon smell of the “oil” in them, so it wasn’t until you’d already bitten off a big chunk of brownie that you realized what was going on. I couldn’t get the taste out of my mouth all day.
Anyway, back to ice cream: I don’t know what half of these flavors are, but I DO know that there’s no way on God’s green earth I’d ever willingly eat bacon ice cream. Good God.
@ Jennifer, how about a dulce de leche cheesecake flavor?
I only approve of coconut in piña colada or macaroon form.
While I’m not totally on board with the bacon ice cream thing, the description of “vanilla custard ice cream with bacon pieces” is making me wish that I’d heard of it before my cat passed away last year. Because she would have looooooved that, no matter how unappealing it may sound to me.
Hmm. Is there a market for pet ice cream? You’d think, they seem to have everything else.
And what’s with all the lime sherbet hate? Am I the only person who wishes there was still a Friendly’s in business somewhere so I could relieve my childhood via their lime sherbet/seltzer spritzer thingy that was a godsend for those of us who don’t like milkshakes in all its tall fluted glass occupying, maraschino cherry having, quickest way to give yourself brain freeze in Augusty splendor?
*re-live* my childhood.
Geez, it’s like spellcheck doesn’t even give a damn when your typos are words too. Get on that, Google.
Yes, MaggieCat, there is pet ice cream — the one I’ve seen is called Frosty Paws.
That bacon-brownie story is appalling. I can taste it. Ugh. But I expect the bacon ice cream wouldn’t be so bad — rather like the garlic ice cream I had at Garlic’s in London, which was a rich vanilla with caramelised garlic bits. I liked it. It reminded me of durian fruit (not that that is necessarily a selling point for some). The thing that stopped me cold there was the roasted garlic cloves dipped in chocolate, on top. Talk about things that are completely wrong…. ugh. Completely did not work, from a flavour perspective.
@ Maggie Cat, as a matter of fact, pets do have their own ice cream-style treats! Frosty Paws for dogs and Cool Claws for the kittehs.
http://www.frostypawstreats.com
http://www.coolclaws.com
Because your pets are people, too!
@Nilda: On the subject of maple, Ben and Jerry’s makes a flavor called “The Full Vermonty” which is maple ice cream, caramel swirl, and pecan pieces. LOVE. That was my “American treat thing” that I used to buy in Scotland when I needed a dose of something American. It’s one of the few named B&J flavors that I’ve ever seen that don’t have chocolate, which again: LOVE.
Yeah…ew. In my head and on my tongue, there is no reconciling garlic and chocolate.
There just isn’t.
(also, durian fruit features heavily in my foodmares.)
I was at the store tonight, and picked up a pint of the Haagen Dazs Sticky Toffee Pudding to try. I think I’ve found my new religion.
That last one was an easy pick for me because I think food with lavender in it tastes like eating soap. You can imagine the fun I had on a family visit to Provence, where they put lavender in everything they can reach. Bleh. I think it must be like the cilantro thing, tastebuds that are genetically different. (Oddly, I am not among the cilantro=soap group, so it must be a different gene than lavender. You’d think our genetic code would have better things to do than devoting all this space to making herbs taste like soap.)
@elayne : !!!!! talk about a gag reflex!! That is so scary I may not eat BROWNIES for a while. blegh.
@MaggieCat: My cat is like that too!! She’s so bad that whenever we eat ice cream we practically have to lock her in the bathroom so that she won’t drive us insane with her begging for a bite! :) I am going to try that Frosty Paws for her!
Forgot to say this yesterday, but Sars: you’ve just invented a awesome word for describing people who are mostly vegetarian but eat fish and other sea creatures! Pescatarian sucks. I’m totally telling my friend who eats fish about this so we can stop arguing about whether she’s a vegetarian or not. :)
5 Lime sherbet vs. 12 coconut. Huh. Presented with them both, I want to swirl them together and dunk a scoop of the combo into a vodka tonic,
I can’t be the only one who now has Harry Nilsson in my head, can I? Also, I neglected to pick up ice cream yesterday which was a huge and stupid oversight, and now I’m sad. And hungry.
Anyway, I’m one of those people who really doesn’t like coconut – the only acceptable place for it is smothered in chocolate for homemade macaroons – so lime sherbet it is.
And, much as I love both peanut butter and chocolate, and love them together, the Baskin Robbins version of this (which is the only one I’ve tried) is waaaay too rich. Much like cheesecake (which I don’t like at all). However, it does put me in mind of a White Mountain flavour called “E.T.”: chocolate ice cream with Reese’s Pieces. Joy!
I love caramel, so it was clearly dulce de leche on that one. Dunno whether it’s referring to ginger ice cream or gingersnaps, but the few times I’ve had ginger ice cream I was relatively pleased.
@Deirdre: I used to loooooove the BR version as a kid, and ordered it almost every time. I can’t do it anymore, though, because the chunks of peanut butter are HUGE, and kind of…greasy, and it’s too much.
“As far as breakfast ice cream goes, Ben & Jerry’s makes an excellent Cinnamon Roll.”
Oh yes, they do. Cinnamony sweet ice cream with caramel swirls and chunks of cinnamon dough. Love! Autumn is my favorite season for a bunch of reasons: the weather, the leaves changing, the satisfaction of getting a crunchy on the outside, warm on the inside soft pretzel on the way home from work in late October. And one of the main reasons autumn is my favorite season is that I love the spicy sweet flavors it brings: love the pumpkin lattes and pumpkin loaves at Starbucks, love ginger snaps, love maple syrup, and love ice cream flavors like these. Dulce de Leche is BOMB.
I love lime flavored things and don’t like coconut (it’s my grandfather’s favorite, so I always politely eat two bites of his birthday cake and am done), so that one was easy.
That bacon brownie story is one of the most vile food stories I have heard in recent memory. Love bacon, love chocolate, but they do not belong together.
So sad ginger’s losing! I *love* ginger ice cream. Franklin Fountain, a retro-cute soda fountain in Philadelphia’s Olde City, has a nummy ginger ice cream. They do custom ice cream sodas and one of my favorite concoctions is ginger ice cream with grapefruit soda. Seriously good.
Dude, they make sticky toffee pudding ice cream?! That squeal you heard was my tires on my way to the freezer section of the grocery store.
@MaggieCat, there are Friendly’s still around but they are harder to find now… is it the “slammer” drink that they mix sherbet and seltzer to make? I am boring in that the only dessert I get there is the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Sundae with Chocolate ice cream.
Okay, I have two cats who would approve whole-heartedly of the bacon ice cream.
The fact that there is now bacon ice cream and olive oil ice cream available makes some of its early predecessors more understandable.
Yes, in addition to the more pedestrian (and digestible) vanilla, the two top hits of the late 18th/early 19th centuries were:
Brown Bread ice cream; and
Oyster ice cream.
So, Sars, how would they do against, say, tutti fruitti?
Based on the fact that 95% of all strawberry ice cream is repellent, I voted for the bacon, sight unseen. Or rather, taste untasted. (The other 5% is amazing, but it’s pretty hard to find.)
And ginger lovers? If you ever come across Reed’s ginger ice cream (which used to be sold at Whole Foods but now isn’t, or at least not in D.C.), check it out. (Even better is their chocolate ginger.)
@LaBell: I don’t know how they’d do; I’d vote for either of them. I cannot overstate my loathing of candied fruit, I really cannot.
@glark/Sars: I think that candied baby would be the ONLY appropriated candied form to go into ice cream. Frankly, it’s more appetizing than bacon. Sounds like they were sitting around with the Harry Potter Jelly Beans and thought “Hell, people will eat dirt flavored jelly beans, why not bacon ice cream?” Bring on some more jelly beans for me.
Count me in on the Hate Everything Coconut train. Ew.
But I do love me some bacon chocolates, so I totally voted bacon on that one.
Sars, I wish you had been present at one spectacular meal I attended; there were at least eight really imaginative, not to mention peculiar, courses, and every single one of them was ice cream. I think there was some kind of fish ice cream; roast beef ice cream … stuff too weird to remember.
Okay, now I will have to find the menu, which I actually saved because the meal was so strange.
To balance out the coconut haters (phooey!), I have to say that I really like it. And I love — LOVE, with every fibre of my being — Haagen Dazs’s Toasted Coconut Sesame Brickle ice cream. It is OH MY GOD so good. I can’t believe I didn’t find it until last week, but now? My life is complete. And also, my bank balance belongs to Haagen Dazs. Dammit. (But — happy! yummy! yay!)
And I second the love for “vegequarian” — it’s so much better than pescatarian or “I’m vegetarian but I eat seafood because I can blame it on being raised Catholic, and also? shrimp = yum!”
Wait, Wikipedia tells me that butter brickle is just faux-Heath Bar crunch! Why did I not know this?
I’m totally going home tonight and making maple ice cream with bacon bits.
@Keckler: The Vosages store in NYC sells a bacon chocolate bar with actual bacon in it. It is divine.