The N.C. Double Scoop Round Of 64, Flight 2: Write-Ups
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1 Cookies and cream vs. 16 spumoni. Okay, I admit it. I didn’t know what spumoni was until Bunting put it out there for the commenters. And then I threw up in my mouth a little. Candied fruit doesn’t belong in ice cream, it doesn’t belong in fruitcake (which just doesn’t belong period), and when it comes right down to it, I don’t know where it belongs except NOT in MY mouth! Cookies and cream easily.
8 Phish Food vs. 9 fudge ripple. Man, talk about being caught between an ick and a gross place. Well, that’s a bit strong. I’ve just never seen the appeal of Phish Food. I mean, I do like the marshmallow component, but really don’t like the fudge fish. In fact, I just don’t like fudge in ice cream because it’s too much of an okay thing. …And that brings us to fudge ripple. Meh. Phish Food will win, because it’s just that popular.
5 Black walnut vs. 12 sticky toffee pudding. Sticky toffee pudding is possibly the best dessert in the world, and we have the Brits to thank for it. However, we have Haagen-Dazs to thank for making it into an ice cream. Black walnut is another one of my flava-faves, but sticky toffee is killer and it has to win.
4 Heath Bar Crunch vs. 13 peach. I don’t care if the famous flavor Peachy Paterno stalks the grounds of Penn State like a giant stalking thing, I do not like peach ice cream. (Or Penn State, but that’s more of a football problem.) However, big love for Heath Bar Crunch or any ice cream with toffee pieces in it, so that’s where I’m headed.
6 Toasted almond vs. 11 Key lime pie. Key lime pie, with the tasty bits of graham cracker crust sowed throughout the ice cream, is a pretty nice flavor, but toasted almond will roast it.
3 Mint chocolate chip vs. 14 avocado. Hm, green on green and one is considered a vegetable — tho’ it’s a fruit — and the other has chocolate in it. Avocado ice cream is interesting and doesn’t taste like an actual avocado, but mint choc. chip will smear it into guacamole.
7 Chocolate chip vs. 10 cinnamon. As much as I really enjoy vanilla-based ice creams, I find chocolate chip beyond boring and will always, always champion celebratory cinnamon over it. Especially if you throw in a piece of apple pie.
2 Rainbow sherbet vs. 15 roasted banana. Okay, what is sherbet really? Is it cream? Is it water? No, don’t answer that; I looked it up and I know it’s just our American-y way of saying “sorbet” — according to the FDA, it’s a synonym — but it also might have milk products in it, which sorbet doesn’t. I just sort of wish sherbet would pick a side because it really does seems to straddle the line. Much as I love granitas and sorbets in their place, they just don’t seem to measure up to the buttery heft of ice cream. ICE CREAM, not sherbet. However, as I said earlier, I gag over banana, so I’m giving it to the childhood memories that probably abound in rainbow sherbet. Have fun with it.
Tags: food Penn State Phish
In case anyone missed mention of it elsewhere: the polls are loading rather slowly today. Your browser will say it’s “done,” but give it another 30-60 seconds to retrieve all the info. It’ll come up eventually.
Email bunting at tomatonation dot come with any recalcitrant loads/broken code, but it’s just kinda pokey this morning; hang in there with it.
On a more content-related note, I love the fact that Keck’s relationship with banana stuff parallels exactly my relationship with cherry stuff (which you’ll see in the next two flights’ write-ups).
Uch, Rainbow sherbet vs roasted banana is like voting between different rings of hell. Really it’s just a vote against one of them.
The only almonds I’ve ever liked in ice cream are the almonds at Cold Stone – they don’t get rock-hard, somehow. They actually carried some flavor into my then-employed-there mix of coffee ice cream, almonds, marshmallow cream, whipped cream mixed in, and hot fudge. I think that would cost someone about one hundred dollars to buy – but holy leather cats, is it good.
(Phish Food, sshhhh, don’t listen to her. Your fudgy phish are truly wonderful, and your ribbon of mallow is the delight of my mouth, you seductive, overly rich guilty pleasure.)
Peach ice cream? Uck. I remember tasting that when I was maybe four or five and being grossed out.
Phish Food is yummy, but Ben and Jerry’s has done better flavors, in my opinion, especially this apple pie one that was deelish. Seeing cinnamon up here has steeled my resolve to find some and see if it is truly awesome. Does anyone know where to get that and/or salted caramel in Michigan? I tried to Google caramel and came up with recipes, but alas, no ice cream maker!
Mint chocolate chip 4eva!
The very idea of roasted banana ice cream makes me feel queasy. The slightest hint of Oreo also makes me ill due to a bad experience involving me being left alone with a giant bag of Double-Stufs when I was 8, so I went with the spumoni. I’m that freak who likes fruitcake too.
A lot of peach ice cream is not very good; you can taste the can, kind of, and then for some reason the way the peaches interact with the surrounding ice cream is not always positive.
But I have a soft spot for it because Grandma and I made it one time, and oh my God it was a battle goddamn royale with her ice-cream maker — yelling, injuries, phone calls to neighbors, it took 12 hours and we threw out seven batches and used every peach on the Main Line but when we finally nailed it? Man. Heaven on a spoon.
Miss you, Grandma.
Oh dear god, someone makes Key Lime Pie ice cream? I’m trying to lose my excess weight, I did NOT need to know that.
Begone foul bananas! You are food only fit for monkeys. Maybe.
Mint Chocolate Chip Mint Chocolate Chip Mint Chocolate Chip
Yikes–some of these match-ups are tough! Yesterday I had problems voting between 2 faves….now it is the opposite: with two toffees in one bracket, the opponent gets my vote by default.
Excited to see the next round :)
Spumoni is Neopolitan’s evil twin that lives in the attic.
I’m writing to you from sunny Georgia, where the homemade peach ice cream to be found at restaurants and ice cream parlors is just DIVINE. Probably because right now it’s being made with fresh southern peaches, not canned.
Fake peach flavor, however, is the grossest of the gross, so I can see how a low quality peach ice cream would be gag-worthy.
I have never heard of Phish food ice cream, but I’m willing to bet I wouldn’t like it.
And I don’t like avocados. I do not like them in a dip. I do not like them on my chips. They make me want to scream; I do not want them in my ice cream.
My spumoni experience: Our family went to the Old Spaghetti Factory when I was 7, and my mom said “Guess what? Every dinner comes with ice cream!” And I was soooo excited for ice cream that I could barely eat my spaghetti. Until the ice cream arrived and it was spumoni. I was like “What IS this crap? I was promised ice cream, dammit!” And I actually cried. The only time that ice cream has ever disappointed me ever. Spumoni is eeeevil!
Ms. Bunting has it right that bad peach ice cream is bad, but good peach ice cream wants you to take it out behind the middle school and get it pregnant. And you want to do it, too. Especially if there are pieces of pie crust in the ice cream. Uh-HUH.
I love black walnut ice cream, but I have found very few other people who do, so I’m sure sticky toffee’s got it.
For those of you who haven’t tried cinnamon ice cream, it really is tasty. Ben & Jerry’s makes Oatmeal Cookie Chunk, which is cinnamon ice cream with oatmeal cookie dough chunks and chocolate chips (which I mostly eat around). That’s a good combo.
I also love the Edy’s/Dreyer’s gingerbread flavor.
I too have a childhood peach-ice-cream-making memory…my first encounter with rock salt and block ice. We all got to sit and swing the batch of a hatchet at the ice in a burlap bag to crush it (now that I think of it, probably also my first encounter with burlap). I’m betting that allowing kids to handle hatchets these days is Not Done.
Visiting the grandparents was way cool.
I hate to be That Person, but Mint Chocolate Chip should not be green. Ever. It’s just wrong!! That said, I’m extremely pissed off that Breyer’s is now selling their ice cream in 1.5 quart containers instead of 1.75 quart containers and charging the same price. That is a NO-NO! I’ve been forced to eat the green stuff! Forced, I tell you!
Anyway, I like the idea of the roasted banana, but I’m not so sure about the reality of it. If you MUST put bananas in a dessert, at least set them on fire and entertain me a little. Otherwise… meh.
And ohhhhhhh yeah – sticky toffee pudding is definite proof that God loves us and wants us to be FAT. That is some good stuff.
I have had way too many bad experiences with fresh peaches (…and most here on the Main Line. Coincidence?), but fresh peach ice cream is a thing of beauty. I once drove 45 minutes out of my way to hit a frozen custard place the day they had peach flavour–I actually watched them cut up the peaches and throw them into the mix. Ice creamgasm, I tell you.
I regret not trying Peachy Paterno on my pilgrimage to the Creamery. If it’s anywhere near as good as their Pumpkin Pie…
Awww, I have the exact opposite memory of spumoni at The Old Spaghetti Factory. It was always my Dad’s favorite, so I grew up thinking it was the best, ever. Miss you, Dad.
I think we all know that “Mint Chocolate Chip” is more properly termed “Peppermint Bon Bon”.
@Tarn, I had the same OSF experience as child. I decided to vote for spumoni, since I started the discussion (not sure if it owes its place on the bracket to me, but I like to think so), and because I love pistachio, and I truly believe that theoretically there’s a great spumoni out there.
I’ve had truly amazing home-made peach ice cream, which gets to the underlying debate: do you vote based on the best version of that ice cream that you’ve had, or on the average? Since actual NCAA bracket is based on one-time amazing performances, not best-of-7 series, I’m going with the “best version” of each.
I love the fact that Sticky Toffee Pudding was a contest winner – it just makes me love it that much more. I had to look up her name, but Judiaann Woo deserves some credit here for bringing this awesomeness to us.
“Peppermint Bon Bon”? That sounds like it should be a dance out of The Nutcracker.
The real question is: Green mint chocolate chip or white? (My vote is for green.)
I think of Cinnamon Buns as far as cinnamon- caramel base, cinnamon streudel swirling and cinnamon bun dough.
Yummy.
Also, the first syllable of spumoni is ‘spew’. Or at least it’s close enough.
Peachy Paterno? With whatever secret ingredient that’s keeping Joe ALIVE?
I love avocados, but as ice cream? Seriously, anything that I could reasonably describe as a vegetable does not go near the final course of my meal. Ever.
Yeah, carrot cake, I’m looking at you.
In defense of spumoni, it can be made without candied fruit. Keckler, I am as disgusted by those rubbery pieces of un-food as you are, and if I had only known spumoni to contain, say, the violently green cherries that come in the plastic tubs, I would hate it. But I have only known spumoni to contain no fruit, except what is normally in strawberry ice cream.
Angelo Brocato’s in New Orleans makes spumoni wedges that consist of pistachio, lemon and strawberry ice cream, and some white stuff with little bits of almond in it that I think may just be frozen whipped cream. It is the taste of New Orleans Siciliana to me and makes me want to cry happy tears just thinking about it. Might go get some tonight!
Dudes, spumoni sounds totally nasty. Cookies and Cream for the win – esp since it is my all-time fav!
Also, I’m gonna have to vote for the banana ice cream. We had a local place called the IceCream Smith that made all their own ice cream during the winters – they were closed from Thanksgiving through March 1st every year. And banana with peanut butter cups mixed in was my dad’s favorite. I don’t live there any more but I got that combo from Cold Stone the other day for old times’ sake – not quite the same, but good memories. Miss you dad!
Off topic, but the tomato icon! In the URL bar! I missed it so!
Your readership, we know how to spend a Friday night :)
I love that Keckler (my foodie icon) despises bananas and banana flavored products as much as I do. They taste like mushy ass. Freezing them and adding sugar is not an improvement.
Other than banana, I’m the girl who love fruit flavored ice-cream. Keep your chocolate. I’ll happily take pumpkin, key lime, black raspberry, and passion fruit sorbet.
I was a Penn Stater for grad school, and ice cream from the Creamery kept me from killing people on a daily basis. (Alas, here in Husker-ville, the ice cream from the Creamery is not even close to on-par.) Peachy Paterno wasn’t ever my favorite, but one year they had a trial run of Lion S’Mores – it was goopy and blue and had graham crackers and marshmallow and OH MY GOD IT WAS LIKE TASTING HEAVEN ITSELF. But they discontinued it because they couldn’t get the consistency up because of all the marshmallow, and I remain disappointed to this day.
I like spumoni, roasted banana, and Phish Food, so I can take all those pints you guys don’t want off your hands.
Either cinnamon or mint chip for the win, though. Come to think of it, I think I’ll go make up a batch of each; they’ll go nicely with the Olympics viewing.
Don’t knock avocado ice cream until you try it- avocado in something sweet is so incredibly tasty and about as far away from guacamole as you will get. You’d be surprised, but it’s soooo good in milkshakes, ice, cream, etc. Even just straight avocado with sugar is pretty fabulous. I know, I know, it sounds really weird, but it really is awesome.
That said, I found Flight 1 to contain many more ice creams about which I am passionate, and not so much with Flight 2. I’m still trying to find out where I can get salted caramel ice cream in the Atlanta area.
@ferretrick – “Phish food” is quite possibly the most perfect PMS ice cream EVAR. Chocolate ice cream, marshmallow, caramel, and hunks of fudge. The only thing it’s possibly missing is something salty, but that’s easily remedied with a handful of peanuts or pretzels as a chaser. (…what?? Oh, like y’all have never done it.)
My husband – who is allergic to chocolate and doesn’t have a sweet tooth (can you IMAGINE?!) – shudders to see it in the freezer. But you better believe that he’ll make store run if it gets to be That Time Of The Month and I have That Look In My Eye. He loves me, he really does.
@Laura: Yeah, Glark just sent me the li’l guy last night. So cute!
Ohhh, that’s it. I’m voting for Peach just because of the shot at Penn State.
Okay, all you rabid spumoni voters — quit knockin’ out my servers, bitches.
(j/k. It was totally red bean voters. Also: sorry about that, my peoples! I think between some slowage on Micropoll’s end plus lots of votes, it crosses up the server on my end. If it happens again, go read something else for a few minutes and then come back…because we have two more flights going up over the weekend, so it may in fact happen again.)
I never had a mint chocolate chip — green or white? — conversation with myself until I tried the deliciousness of Ben & Jerry’s Mint Chocolate Chunk. Sweet fancy Moses. I can never eat the green stuff again.
Oh and bananas in ice cream? Yuck. The texture is always gross.
All of you guys knocking green mint chocolate chip ice cream have never known the wonders of my mother’s homemade. It is the greatest ice cream to ever ice cream. She makes it with creme de menthe instead of peppermint or anything else. So it’s all greeny, boozy goodness!
She also has a super old school ice cream maker that has a five-gallon tub. Maybe I can convince her to make some when I visit in a few weeks – I’ll just have to eat the whole damn thing in one weekend :)
And now I have all these new flavors to try! Good thing autumn and thick, chunky sweater season is approaching to cover my thick, chunky midriff after all this sampling… May need to get a freezer case for the house…
My two cents: just say no to the fruit/chocolate combo and bananas in ice cream, people! Bleck….
@K – I am a big big big fan of B&J Mint Chocolate Cookie. That is my go-to pint for PMS week. And I will say it again – MCChip is WHITE. Why add fakery to perfectly lovely ice cream?
This has nothing to do with anything, but… during Girl Scout Cookie time, Edy’s puts out the GSC flavors – I’m afraid to try them due to the fear that they might suck and ruin GSC time for me. But if anyone has tried the Samoa ice cream, can you give me a shout about how it is vis-a-vis the cookie?
For the peach haters, I present Willie Nelson’s Peach Cobbler from Ben and Jerry’s. I’m not big on the fruit ice cream, but damn. That’s some good stuff.
I am sad to report that Ben & Jerry’s no longer makes Oatmeal Cookie Chunk (which had surpassed mint-choc-chip as my favorite EVAH). The day I learned this news, I was devastated. Stupid Ben. Stupid Jerry.
Nothing ruins ice cream like mint. It’s like a nice cone of goodness was hacked on by a habitual Kool-smoking hooker.
The inclusion of mint chocolate chip in the bracket made me so angry that I punched another baby.
White mint chocolate chip all the way, especially the Ben and Jerry’s Mint Chocolate Chunk (though Breyers is awesome too).
I had mango avocado ice cream recently. Love mango, love avocado, really didn’t like the ice cream. Avocado should not be sweet.
It never even occurred to me that there was a nasty kind of peach ice cream — I’ve only ever had Peachy Paterno (proud alum & lifelong Pennsylvanian) and it is unspeakably delicious. Seriously — it makes you catch your breath, it’s so good.
I’m wondering about cinnamon — are we talking pink Big Red / Atomic Fireball kind of cinnamon (gag me) or, like, vanilla with cinnamon stick flecks? Or straight-up vanilla with, like, a cinnamon streusel swirl? I wouldn’t come within a mile of pink Big Red ice cream, but you might convince me on the other ideas.
Also, mint choc. chip / peppermint? I may as well be eating a Colgate cone. Though I won’t be punching babies about it. That’s Glark’s department.
*whimper* It looks as if the banana flavors are all getting whomped out of the running, right off the bat. Which makes me unhappy, as banana is my favorite ice cream flavor in the whole galaxy. I intend to blame the write-ups, for exerting undue influence (I have to find a scapegoat somewhere). All the fun is out of it for me already….
Um.
I really like spumoni. mostly because of the pistachio. I don’t think I have it with candied fruit very often, and it’s not hard to eat around.
I also refuse to eat anything peach-flavored that isn’t an actual peach. Yech. Ditto bananas, except that I also refuse the actual bananas.
Growing up, when we were given the choice of ice cream flavors, 9 times out of 10 the answer was “green with chocolate ants in it.” Translation: Green mint chocolate chip. White mint chocolate chip is fine, but green will always have my heart.
That being said: As a result of all the ice cream talk this week, I went out to track down salted caramel, in the form of Haagen Dazs’ Fleur de sel caramel. Sweet merciful crap. Thank god my high school reunion was LAST weekend.
True story: my dad said that the reason that I took my first steps was because he was holding out a spoonful of mint chocolate chip, even with that light green color that they use to paint the inside of prisons and psych wards.
Maybe I’ve only had the fake pseudo-Spumoni found in the Midwest, but I’m used to it being a sort of alternative Neapolitan with chocolate, black cherry (NOT the candied maraschino crap) and pistachio, which is a tasty combination.
Wow. Glad to see I’m not the only one who hates mint ice cream with a passion! Just, no. Actually, I hate mint in general. Not even chocolate can save it. Blech.
@ Liz – That sounds like the most wonderful ice cream of man or gods. I’m off to google for a recipe!
Cinnamon ice cream is just fine, but as a precursor to the unutterably divine Cinnamon Dulce de Leche it will get my vote every single time.
I <3 you Glark. I couldn’t agree more.