Haagen-Dazs Artisan Collection Ginger Molasses Cookie

Oh man, another slam dunk from the new-ish Haagen-Dazs Artisan collection.  Ginger Molasses Cookie is a collaboration with The Good Batch bakery in Brooklyn, NY.  (Who, by the way, has a cookie of the month subscription if anyone wants to, like, buy that for me or something.)  Haagen-Dazs describes this flavor as

Ginger molasses cookie pieces are mixed into gourmet vanilla cinnamon ice cream to create an artisan recipe inspired by the renowned bakery treats of The Good Batch in Brooklyn.




First I'll talk about the base.  I think this is the first time, or at least the first time in recent memory that I have had a vanilla cinnamon base, and I don't understand why it isn't used more often.  Often, a plain cinnamon base has a very harsh base.  Here, the addition of vanilla balanced the cinnamon very well.  The vanilla gave the base flavor some warmth and depth to balance out the spiciness of the cinnamon and the cookies.  Also, you could actually see the cinnamon in the base which was nice.  So, I have to be totally honest with you, dear readers, I didn't love this base on first bite.  I think I was expecting something a bit bolder, but once I took a few more bites and took some time to sit back and appreciate the flavors I stated to love the depth and complexity of the base flavor.  It's not in-your-face, but it is awesome.



Now for the cookies!  These were not so much cookie chunks as they were cookie pellets.  They were uniformly sized cylindrical pellets of crunchy ginger cookie goodness.  Again, these were disappointing at first.  I didn't think they tasted super spicy.  Like the base, this was something I had to take a few bites of to really appreciate.  As I ate more and more of the ice cream the spice and ginger flavor from the cookies built.  It was awesome, because after a while the ginger flavor really came out to play, and I could tell that these cookies were made from with real ginger.  Also, they were super crunchy, which I feel like could be a controversial thing, but I liked it.  Lastly, there were so many little cookie pellets.  There were at least five per spoonful and often way more than that.



If you have this ice cream and don't love it after the first couple bites, keep eating.  You might start to love it after the fifth or sixth or tenth bite.  So serve yourself an extra large bowl.

I have to give Haagen-Dazs mad props on this Artisan Collection line.  Although Haagen-Dazs is a super-premium brand of ice cream, I have always thought of it as the 'safe, suburban' super-premium ice cream.  They didn't have any flavors that stood out to me as incredibly unique.  Now, there's nothing wrong with this.  The flavors they did have were executed well, but I always wondered how they would do with something more adventurous, and I thought there was room in their brand for that.  Haagen-Dazs is such an established, household-name brand, that I don't think they would sacrifice the perception of their brand by trying something new.  And finally, finally they did, and the outcome is absolutely splendid.


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