month of loves: ice cream

What a great excuse to go to an ice cream shop with my wonderful husband once a week for a month! When we discovered, as we pulled into the parking lot, that neither of us had brought our wallets, we briefly considered just going home, but Sam reminded me, "It's for the blog."

We went to Baskin-Robbins tonight. I counted to make sure there really were at least 31 varieties offered, just because I was curious. The three flavors I tested, in order of deliciousness (least to most) were Strawberry Cheesecake, Love Potion #31, and SuperFudge Truffle (the last two were the flavors of the month).

The SuperFudge Truffle was indeed super, fudge-y, and packed with truffles. Here's the description from the B-R website: "Chocolate Fudge ice cream is combined with chunks of chocolate ganache and toffee truffle pieces." As a chocolate lover, this ice cream is a dream come true. But it's not the flavor I ended up getting because I promised myself I wasn't going to buy an ice cream with a chocolate base during the course of this escapade (we'll see if that actually happens).

So, I went with my second choice in deliciousness, which wasn't a poor substitute by any means. Here's the description: "Cupid’s White Chocolate and Raspberry ice creams swirled with a raspberry ribbon and loaded with raspberry-filled chocolate hearts and chocolate chips." My test of this flavor convinced me immediately that it would be the flavor I bought because it was so different from usual ice cream flavors.

The first thing I noticed was the raspberry "ribbon" --so tart and flavorful. It was wonderful to have bursts of pure raspberry flavor throughout the cone. Raspberry puree was the second ingredient after cream, so I know it was the real thing. I liked the base ice cream because it was a white chocolate rather than vanilla, so the raspberry wasn't competing against anything else for the main flavor in your mouth. And thankfully, those chocolate chips were nice and dark, so they too set off the tartness, and, well, I think chocolate added to most any ice cream enhances rather than detracts from its awesomeness. Finally, it truly was loaded with those chocolate hearts. They reminded of those chocolate-covered raspberry sticks except with liquid. And the heart shape was extremely cute.

All in all, this was one of my more delightful forays into non-traditional ice cream flavors, and I highly recommend going and getting a kid scoop of your own (it was so rich, that was the perfect size). You may just find me there enjoying a scoop of SuperFudge Truffle.