Brain freeze
As the champion-foodstuffs bracket prepares to make its triumphant midsummer return with an ice-cream face-off, Keckler and I find ourselves with a few unanswered questions — starting with whether Rocky Road is the same thing as Heavenly Hash.
Internet research is telling us it’s two names for the same thing — chocolate ice cream, marshmallows, and nuts, although the ‘mallow in the Hash may take ribbon form — but our sense is that it’s not.I feel like the Hash doesn’t have nuts, or like one of them has chocolate chips and the other doesn’t.
Help us out, my people.Same thing?Different things?We have a freezer-case-load of qualifiers for the Sweet 64, so a few of these delectations have gots to go.School us in the comments.
(The bad news: I’m in Vegas as of this writing and my flight back will have me out of commish much of the day, so if your comment doesn’t come through right away, don’t worry — I’ll get to it.The good news: three randomly selected commenters can win a free pint of Ben and Jerry’s for answering, so if you want to qualify, please post your comment with a working email address.)
Tags: Ben and/or Jerry contests food Heavenly Hash Rocky Road
Rocky Road is chocolate ice cream, almonds (although I will concede to some versions having walnuts – but never both), and mini marshmallows (which makes it among my top five for ice cream flavors, because frozen marshmallows are the perfect texture if you want tasty, chunk-like things in your ice cream).
Heavenly Hash is something I vaguely remember from my youth, but I believe it’s got a little less chunk and a lot more swirl. Sort of like Rocky Road meets Tin Roof Sundae.
Huh – I don’t think I’ve ever heard of Heavenly Hash, and I’m a lifelong NY resident (Buffalo, to be precise)… then again, I never buy ice cream because my tiny shoebox freezer can’t keep it cold enough. I can only have it if I go out for it. :( Rocky road, from what I recall, is chocolate ice cream with mini marshmallows and nuts.
I can’t find HH listed on the Breyers website, though – just RR: “chocolate ice cream with marshmallow swirl and chocolaty covered almonds.”
Likewise, Turkey Hill, our finest local ice cream maker (based in Lancaster County, PA), has RR: “Dutch chocolate ice cream swirled with whipped marshmallow and butter-roasted almonds” – but no HH.
I remember HH from when I was a kid – it had smaller bits than Rocky Road, which I (like so many others here) think of as having mini-marshmallows, not swirl. My guess is that manufacturers figured out that people prefer swirl, so they switched. Mmmm, gooey marshmallow!
Talking about Turkey Hill brings up an Ice Cream Issue, though – Sars, how can the Ice Cream Face-off take into account the terrific regional flavors like Graeter’s Black Raspberry Chip, etc. – when many voters won’t have access? You can buy Graeter’s online, but it ain’t cheap what with overnight shipping & all.
I guess I don’t have much opinion one way or another on this — I don’t think we HAVE Heavenly Hash here in the midwest — but now I am VERY hungry for ice cream, and still have two hours yet to work!!
:: cries ::
I can’t answer this for sure because it’s been about a zillion years since I’ve had Rocky Road or Heavenly Hash. I married a man and gave birth to a boy who only ever want “plain, homogeneous” ice cream — no ribbons, nuts or chunks of anything. It’s too dangerous for me to have whole container of ice cream around here that no one else will eat. My recollection is that RR and HH are definitely different, and I haven’t seen HH since moving to the east coast from the midwest.
Any other midwesterners remember Hawaiian Sundae ice cream? I’ve missed it SO much since moving out here….
Every brand of ice cream has their own unique take on Rocky Road: marshmallow ribbons or tiny marshmallows, chocolate-covered almonds or unadorned, sliced or whole almonds, SuperChocolate or mild-mannered. I’ve yet to see a form that included chocolate chips, but it doesn’t strike me grounds to exclude it from the Rocky Road category. Now if it uses a different kind of nut (or none at all), then yes, it’s a different ice cream. Otherwise, without having tasted it before (never seen it here in Texas), I’d say Heavenly Hash is a form of Rocky Road.
Throwing in my 2 cents – my feeling is that HH has a marshmallow ribbon, almonds, and sometimes chocolate chips/chunks and RR has minimarshmallows and almonds. Both are in a chocolate ice cream base.
While I heart ice cream in particular, my poor body will not allow me to ingest nuts of any kind, so I always avoided both the HH and the RR. I was hoping, when first I stated to read the comments, that perhaps HH was nut free but I am beginning to think that is a fool’s pipe dream, to gratuitously mix my metaphors. Which is too bad because the idea of chocolate ice cream with ribbons of marshmallow within it sounds heart-thumpingly ideal.
For my money, no other ice cream need be considered once one has had Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Therapy. But that might just be me.
crap. now i want chocolate. with nuts. and marshmallows. or this:
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Rocky-Road-Fudge-Bars/Detail.aspx
yummmm…..
I’m with CJRW. I’ve never heard of HH being from the Midwest and now living on the left coast and all.
RR has mini-marshmallows and almonds. It seems to be darker chocolate than milk. And tasty as all get out. It’s my choice at Baskin-Robbins now that grape sherbet is no more.
The Breyer’s web site describes Rocky Road as chocolate ice cream with marshmallow swirl and chocolate covered almonds. They don’t seem to include a listing for Heavenly Hash.
The Stewart’s web site uses almost the same description for Heavenly Hash, except HH includes chocolate chips. They don’t list Rocky Road.
The Hood web site doesn’t list either. (They do go into some detail about their convenient new packaging, which I assume is smaller than an actual half gallon, but for the same price.)
It’s weird. They seem pretty much the same, but I always remembered liking Heavenly Hash better as a kid. I haven’t had either kind in years.
I only became familiar with Hood Ice Cream when I went to law school in the Northeast. However, I can say that it is a fabulous brand and Heavenly Hash is my favorite flavor. This coming from a former die-hard Rocky Roadite. I like the fact that it is a milkier chocolate and ribbons of marshmallow- mmmm, makes me want some now.
Breyer’s Rocky Road has a marshmallow “ribbon”.
I’ve always thought of the two flavors – Heavenly Hash and Rocky Road – as interchangeable. I think the type of nuts and marshmallow depends on the brand you buy.
I’m surprised to see (from other people’s comments) that Heavenly Hash is apparently an east-cost thing. I’ve been living in NY my whole life and I’ve never heard of it.
I’ve also never heard of Heavenly Hash. Is it just an East Coast thing? Has my Colorado childhood has left me deprived of chocolate marshmallow goodness?
You can get both in Idaho, so I don’t think HH is east coast regional. I recall that in Idaho you could also get something called “Cloudy With a Chance of Cookies.” It was swirled blue and white something with chocolate chip cookie pieces, and I’ve never seen it anywhere else I’ve lived. I always thought the nuts in RR were strictly almonds.
I talked at length with Tara about this after listening to the podcast at Overwhelming Positivity, and in the course of that conversation, I realized I don’t think I’ve ever had Rocky Road. Had a lot of Heavenly Hash as a kid, though, and I’m pretty confident when I say: chocolate base, marshmallow ribbons, chopped-up almonds in small pieces, and (this one I’m iffier on) tiny chocolate chips. All delicious.
Wow, I’ve never even heard of Heavenly Hash. Sounds far too good.
I don’t remember ever seeing Heavenly Hash, just Rocky Road. Chalk it up to West Coast ice cream shopping.
I’m not a big RR fan, because I don’t like mini marshmallows in my ice cream. I can totally get behind a swirl of marshmallow sauce or cream in my ice cream, as it’s gooey and delicious; mini marshmallows in ice cream are like chewing pieces of marshmallowy rubber.
If you’re building the bracket, I have to put in a vote for a sorbet or two – there’s an awesome blood orange gelato/sorbet made by Ciao Bello (http://www.ciaobellagelato.com/). Whenever it appears at my corner market, it’s wiped out within 24 hours – I think the neighbors watch for the ice cream truck to make a delivery, then pounce.
@Amanda- I now have to find ways to work “balls-to-the-wall chocolate” into conversation. I’m not sure what context works best, but I’m sure anything will do.
I’m like both, but I’m not personally a huge fan of either. I love nuts, but (and I’m seeing above that I’m not alone in this) for some reason, I don’t care for them in my ice cream. I think it comes from years of my mother insisting on buying butter pecan every freaking time we got ice cream from the store. Except for Chunky Monkey. God I love Chunky Monkey. I did work in an ice cream shop for quite a few summers, though, and I definitely remember both having nuts. However, as many have said, Rocky Road must have tiny marshmallows. I never really thought about Hash as having marshmallow in it at all, but we never carried it at our shop and I didn’t eat it much.
Bring on the bracket!!
Isn’t the vanilla-based variation Tin Roof Sundae? Or is that strictly midwestern-speak?
Never heard of HH… RR is icky. Marshmallows have no place in ice cream just as raisins have no place in baked goods. Hee! :D
My first encounter with Heavenly Hash was not in ice cream form. Instead I encountered these delectable fudgey bars at a bakery that were called Heavenly Hash bars. They through in some carmel too along with the marshmellows, chocolate chips and of course, fudggggge…yum.
As for the ice cream, I have never had it or Rocky road either because I’m not a big fan of nuts in my ice cream. I take chunks of chocolate over nuts any day.
No nuts in Heavenly Hash – at least, not in the late ’70s in Northern VA. That’s the only reason I ate it. If we had Rocky Road instead, I spat out every nut. Gross, in hindsight.
I’ve lived most of my life in the west, and I’ve never encountered Heavenly Hash that I can recall. Baskin Robins and the local ice cream places all had Rocky Road, but not HH. Maybe this bracket can help settle another ice cream question: what exactly is the flavor make up of spumoni? I’ve seen cinnamon-cherry-pistachio, and Dryers lists theirs as “chocolate-pistachio-spumoni” (seems like some circular logic there.)
Heavenly Hash? I’ve never heard of it, so I’m guessing it’s not sold in Alaska.
I had never even heard of Heavenly Hash until this post (I grew up in Oregon and California), but it sounds really good. Rocky Road was never really my thing, but this sounds just different enough that I will have to search around DC for it.
@May- love the Weird Al reference
To contribute, I’ve seen different versions of Rocky Road under different store brand names (peanuts vs almonds) so I would suspect that the answer is going to be different depending what store you shop at. So you might as well consider them to be roughly equivalent, since any given store might have a Rocky Road that matches some other brand’s Hash.
I grew up on the West Coast and am a huge fan of Rocky Road. Sadly, I haven’t had Rocky Road since becoming a vegetarian as marshmallows are made with gelatin.
I’ve never heard of Heavenly Hash, but it sounds as if it’s made with marshmallow fluff, which is usually made without gelatin.
If that’s the case, it might be a good veggie sub for Rocky Road. Can anyone answer that question?
Perhaps it is a regional thing, as has been mentioned in some of the previous posts. I’m an OH gal and grew up knowing Rocky Road as chocolate ice cream with a marshmallow ripple and chocolate covered peanuts. We used to get Schwan’s brand when I was a kid. A quick check on their website confirms that my memory is firing on all cylinders and I also see they’re still making it 15 years after I last had it. The same formula/composition is used by the dairy near my hometown and by most of the brands carried in Cleveland. Heavenly Hash here is a homemade candy (like fudge with nuts and marshmallows), and Rocky Road is the ice cream form of that.
Side note: I drink soda rather than pop and wear sneakers, not tennis shoes. Credit that to my husband, who spent some of his formative years in NY (but is an OH native, like me).
Just to answer a few questions:
1. We’re still trying to narrow down the field; some flavors are not going to get in. Regional variants will probably get chopped, but we’ve got most of the country covered between us, so it’s not hopeless; still, Keck mentioned raz-choc chip the other day and I was like, never heard of it.
2. No clue on what spumoni actually is. Can we get a ruling on whether that’s the same as tutti frutti, which nobody makes anymore?
3. If we get enough support for certain flavors that don’t make the cut, we could have an NIAA-type secondary tourney, but keep in mind, these brackets don’t magically make themselves. We have to input them, we have to do the write-ups…it’s totally worth it, don’t get me wrong, but if we negged a flavor you super-love, it’s not because we’re morons or we hate you. It’s 99% logistical.
As always, bunting at tomatonation dot com with questions.
Pint winners will be selected later today, post-Vine.
Tutti-frutti is ice cream with candied fruit in it. No hard-and-fast rule about what the base flavour of ice cream should be. Classically, spumoni (roots in Naples, but now wildly more popular in North America than Italy) is a mixture of chocolate and pistachio ice creams, or chocolate and strawberry, with candied fruit mixed into it. (Does this make spumoni a tutti frutti subset?)
Spumoni is three-flavor, layered ice cream — usually cherry, pistachio and chocolate. I haven’t seen it in a long time.
Tutti frutti is all fruit flavored. Definitely not the same thing.
From Wikipedia:
Spumoni, or spumone, is a molded Italian ice cream made with layers of different colors and flavors, usually containing candied fruits and nuts. Typically it is of three flavors, with a fruit/nut layer between them. The ice cream layers are often mixed with whipped cream. Chocolate and pistachio are the typical flavors of the ice cream layers, and the fruit/nut layer often contains cherry bits. The flavors usually consist of cherry, chocolate or coco bean, and pistachio in the colors pink/red brown and green .
Tutti frutti (from Italian, “all fruits”) is a confection (often ice cream) containing a variety of chopped and usually candied fruits, or an artificially created flavoring simulating the combined flavor of many different fruits. It is often made from unripe papaya that is diced, sundried, dyed and soaked in sugar syrup.
The common colors are green, red, orange and yellow.
I’ve always found chopped dates in my spumoni!!!
I’ve had spumoni, but it’s hard to find. The chief characteristic is a stripe each of vanilla, chocolate and pistacio.
You had me at van/choc/pistash…but then…CANDIED FRUITS. Haaaa-AAAAATE! Hate hate hate!
“You had me at van/choc/pistash…but then…CANDIED FRUITS. Haaaa-AAAAATE! Hate hate hate!”
Me too. Spitspitspit!
It’s been 20 some years so I guess I must have blocked out the candied fruit. Either that or the cheapo version we found didn’t have that.
Maraschino, pistachio and chocolate = Spumoni. I know not of this spumoni including vanilla of which you speak. (I haven’t had it with the fruit chunks in ages — but boy, did I spit ’em out!)
Oh, Heavenly Hash. My mom used to LOVE that! I’m with the people who suggested that HH is less chunky than Rocky Road. Oh god, now I want ice cream, even though I just attended a wedding in Vermont and spent most of the evening making out with Ben & Jerry. They’re so seductive, those two.
The Heavenly Hash that I had (Breyer’s, back in the 90’s) had thin chocolate chunks, walnuts, marshmallow ribbon, and was very very milky. And I still remember it as the best ice cream ever, and could never find it in the supermarket again.
“You had me at van/choc/pistash…but then…CANDIED FRUITS. Haaaa-AAAAATE! Hate hate hate!”
I know, right? Before I saw the Wikipedia entry, I didn’t even know that the “candied fruit” was actually candied unripe papaya (going from bad to BARF.) I’m pretty sure I’ve had it with maraschino cherries, though. Dates? That’s new to me. And … not good.
Candied fruit in ice cream?! Gah, I’ve never heard of such a thing!
Ewewewewewewew.
Ditto on the candied fruit. When I was a kid, I liked going to the Old Spaghetti Factory, because of the novel atmosphere (you could eat inside a trolley car!) and the non-threatening food. But the experience was always marred, because the dessert was included in the dinner, and the only dessert was spumoni. I just checked, and now the OSF doesn’t even offer spumoni anymore.
I also did some web digging on this, and some of the recipes mention rum as the third favor, with chocolate and pistachio.
Sars, you have never had raspberry chocolate chip ice cream? You must visit Cincinnati so I can take you to Graeter’s and correct this problem immediately.
I don’t like rum in desserts either. My mother makes what I am told is a championship rum ball (hee, “ball”), but I think it tastes like a mothball so their excellence is lost on me.
Ergo, rum raisin = gack. My grandma LOVED it, though, and she didn’t even drink. That, and butter brickle, which I *can* get behind.
@Liz C — I hear you on the OSF Spumoni!!! The first and probably last time I ever had Spumoni it was there. 10 year old me: “Hey, ice cream! Awesome!” followed shortly after by “What the…..?” and trying to pick around the cherries or whatever the hell was in there.
@Sars — send your Mom’s rum balls my way! Rum cake is also a big, big favorite of mine….
I think Spumoni is getting all jumbled up with Neapolitan, which is apparently the American version (at least according to Wikipedia.) Neapolitan has just chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry, side-by-side with no fruit or anything in between. They seem to have ditched the more exotic pistachio for strawberry during the import, as chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry were the most popular flavors in the U.S.
I remember encountering the dreaded Neapolitan often at birthday parties when I was a kid, because moms could buy one container of ice cream and have 3 flavors available for the kids. I never wanted the strawberry…not a fan of the fruity ice creams.
Something about DT’s request of Sars to “send [her] mom’s rum balls” made me utter under my breath, “It’s a rummmBalllll in the junnnnnnggggllllle,” and now I’m giggling like a mad little school girl.
Yes, yes I am at work, thank you.
@Rbelle – GACK! Tin Roof Sundae is the worst ice cream ever invented. Truly disgusting crap. It had those awful chocolate-covered peanuts in it, IIRC, and was vanilla base with maybe a chocolate fudge swirl? But the choco-peanuts absolutely ruined it for me.
Re: OSF spumoni, I had some not too long ago (like, within the past year), and I believe it was simply smooth chocolate-cherry-pistachio with no chunks whatsoever. If I could buy that stuff in a store I would. I’m not a big fan of chunks of stuff in my ice cream in general, although there are exceptions (Cherry Garcia, Haagen-Dazs Pineapple-Coconut, and of course the to-die-for Pecan Praline). Which explains why I love the Baskin-Robbins mint chocolate chip: no real “chips” to speak of. They are just these tiny itty bitty shards of chocolate that melt as soon as they hit your mouth. And of course the unnatural green color adds a certain je ne sais quoi to the whole experience.
Bring on the ice cream bracket!!!