Izzy's Pumpkin and Irish Moxie

Several weekends ago Minneapolis got a taste of Indian summer.  It was a warm, delightful 80 degrees all weekend, perhaps the last weekend of the year where it is possible to walk to the ice cream shop and laze in the grass as you lick the desultory drips of ice cream that run slowly down your cone.

To celebrate, I invited a bunch of math people to go to Izzy’s and we had a fairly good turn out, about 15 people.

I saw that they had pumpkin, a seasonal flavor, so I immediately knew I had to get that.  Also, they had an intriguing people’s choice flavor award winner, Irish Moxie.  You can never go wrong with an Izzy’s people’s choice winner.  Normally at Izzy’s I get a single scoop, and was planning to get a single scoop of one of the aforementioned flavors with the other as an Izzy scoop, but I could not, for the life of me, decide which flavor I wanted more of.  The only solution was to get a double scoop with an Izzy scoop of cinnamon.  If there is ever a choice, more ice cream is always the right choice.

The Irish Moxie is on top.  You can barely see the pumpkin ice cream peeking over the edge of the cup.

The pumpkin ice cream was described as

Trade in pie plates and fluted crusts for a creamier kin: pumpkin ice cream.  The deep-amber hues of pumpkin puree, frosty and smooth, come dappled with specks of two types of cinnamon.  Breakaway from the Thanksgiving table and get a little bold with pumpkin.

The most striking thing about this ice cream was that it was not the typical soft, burnt orange color we have come to expect of pumpkin-flavored things.  It was more of a slightly orange tinted brown.  This ice cream leaned more heavily on the spice than the pumpkin flavoring, and while it was good I tend to like more of an actual pumpkin flavor.  While this flavor was definitely delicious, it wasn’t my favorite pumpkin ice cream ever.

Now for the Irish Moxie!

An all time Izzy’s favorite is the Irish Moxie.  This coffee flavored ice cream is made with Jameson Irish Whiskey and then spiced up with a mix of Oreo cookie chunks and Heath Bar candy pieces.  In addition, Irish Moxie was the 2003 Best in Show winner.  May the luck of the Izzy be with you.

At first I was a bit skeptical, as I am sometimes a mix-in purist.  The ideal of Oreo and Heath Bar mix-ins didn't appeal to me right away.  However, this flavor was outstanding.  Both the coffee flavors and the whiskey flavors were smooth and mellow and took a supporting role to the flavor of the mix-ins.  The Oreo chunks were plentiful.  The Heath Bar chunks were less plentiful, but bigger, so it was a nice, not infrequent surprise, to get one in your scoop.  This is what ice cream should be.  Sign up for Izzy’s flavor alerts to see when the scoop shops next offer this flavor!