Babcock Ice Cream
This past weekend, while Brett was visiting, we visited our friends who now live in Madison, Wisconsin. Wisconsin is known as "America's Dairyland" so I was pretty pumped to get some ice cream while visiting. On Sunday, we walked around the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus and discovered an ice cream shop, Babcock Ice Cream. Babcock Dairy is the University's dairy plant and they make ice cream, milk, cheese, and tea. I don't know what tea has to do with anything, but there ya go.
Perks of going to a big public university in Wisconsin? There is a sweet ice cream shop with a ton of flavors right on campus. I guess I made the wrong choice going to Wash U. There were lots of flavors offered which sounded tasty to me, but I decided on Pineapple Cake, to try something unlike anything I have reviewed before, and Cookie Dough to go for something classic.
The Pineapple Cake flavor is described as Pineapple pieces swirled with white cake batter and vanilla ice cream.
I ate this flavor second, but I'm going to start with it for the review. I don't know why. Sometimes I like to live on the wild side. First, the description confuses me. Is the white cake batter white cake batter flavored ice cream, or is there actual cake batter swirled into the vanilla ice cream? I don't know. I didn't notice any type of swirl or anything so I am going to assume there are two base flavors in here.
Whatever was going on with the white cake batter/vanilla ice cream combo was the best part of this ice cream. The vanilla and cake batter flavors mixed together evenly, without one dominating the other. The vanilla tasted like real quality vanilla. The cake batter wasn't overpowering or artificial tasting, which is my normal and frequent complaint with cake batter ice creams.
The pineapple pieces left something to be desired. They were small and added as much texture variation as pulp does in a light pulp orange juice. They also did not add much flavor. There was a fruity sweet flavor present, but it wasn't screaming pineapple. The distinctive tart and acidicness of pineapple was hardly present. Granted, I have never had pineapple cake. Pineapple cake could taste exactly like this ice cream tasted. However, pineapple cake would be pretty lame if this is what it tasted like.
The cookie dough was one of the most unique cookie dough flavors I've ever had. It was tasty, but unique. There was no description of this flavor, so I was expecting a standard vanilla base. However, when I received my ice cream, the base was darker than vanilla. I think the base itself was cookie dough flavored. I definitely tasted vanilla, brown sugar, and butter in the base, but they were all subtle enough to let the chunks of cookie dough shine. This is where this ice cream gets unique. The cookie dough chunks were on the smaller side, about dime sized, and infrequent. About one per bite with some bites without a chunk. What was most unique about these chunks is they were dry. Dry and gritty, but not overly so or gross. But definitely at the baking stage after you've added all of the dry ingredients. I feel like a lot of ice cream companies use cookie dough chunks that are more like before you have added all of the dry ingredients. Thus, they are more moist. The only other ice cream company I've noticed with drier cookie dough chunks is Ben & Jerry's, but I feel this is partially due to the cookie dough chunks in Ben & Jerry's being so large, which is not the case here. On my first bite, I didn't love the dry chunks, but I think my dislike was more surprise than anything else. The flavor of these cookie dough chunks was still quite good, and by the end of my eating experience, I didn't like these cookie dough chunks any more or less than more moist chunks. However, I do acknowledge different people may feel differently on this topic!
Perks of going to a big public university in Wisconsin? There is a sweet ice cream shop with a ton of flavors right on campus. I guess I made the wrong choice going to Wash U. There were lots of flavors offered which sounded tasty to me, but I decided on Pineapple Cake, to try something unlike anything I have reviewed before, and Cookie Dough to go for something classic.
The Pineapple Cake flavor is described as Pineapple pieces swirled with white cake batter and vanilla ice cream.
I ate this flavor second, but I'm going to start with it for the review. I don't know why. Sometimes I like to live on the wild side. First, the description confuses me. Is the white cake batter white cake batter flavored ice cream, or is there actual cake batter swirled into the vanilla ice cream? I don't know. I didn't notice any type of swirl or anything so I am going to assume there are two base flavors in here.
Cookie dough is on top, Pineapple Cake is on bottom.
Whatever was going on with the white cake batter/vanilla ice cream combo was the best part of this ice cream. The vanilla and cake batter flavors mixed together evenly, without one dominating the other. The vanilla tasted like real quality vanilla. The cake batter wasn't overpowering or artificial tasting, which is my normal and frequent complaint with cake batter ice creams.
The pineapple pieces left something to be desired. They were small and added as much texture variation as pulp does in a light pulp orange juice. They also did not add much flavor. There was a fruity sweet flavor present, but it wasn't screaming pineapple. The distinctive tart and acidicness of pineapple was hardly present. Granted, I have never had pineapple cake. Pineapple cake could taste exactly like this ice cream tasted. However, pineapple cake would be pretty lame if this is what it tasted like.
The cookie dough was one of the most unique cookie dough flavors I've ever had. It was tasty, but unique. There was no description of this flavor, so I was expecting a standard vanilla base. However, when I received my ice cream, the base was darker than vanilla. I think the base itself was cookie dough flavored. I definitely tasted vanilla, brown sugar, and butter in the base, but they were all subtle enough to let the chunks of cookie dough shine. This is where this ice cream gets unique. The cookie dough chunks were on the smaller side, about dime sized, and infrequent. About one per bite with some bites without a chunk. What was most unique about these chunks is they were dry. Dry and gritty, but not overly so or gross. But definitely at the baking stage after you've added all of the dry ingredients. I feel like a lot of ice cream companies use cookie dough chunks that are more like before you have added all of the dry ingredients. Thus, they are more moist. The only other ice cream company I've noticed with drier cookie dough chunks is Ben & Jerry's, but I feel this is partially due to the cookie dough chunks in Ben & Jerry's being so large, which is not the case here. On my first bite, I didn't love the dry chunks, but I think my dislike was more surprise than anything else. The flavor of these cookie dough chunks was still quite good, and by the end of my eating experience, I didn't like these cookie dough chunks any more or less than more moist chunks. However, I do acknowledge different people may feel differently on this topic!
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