Cold Stone Salted Butterscotch Brownie

I am continually surprised while writing this blog. Mostly by how much we suck. Like what are we doing with our lives? We have had an ice cream blog for almost a year and a half now and we have not made it over to Cold Stone. One of my goals for graduate school, other than trying every flavor at Heyn's, is to go to every frozen dairy shop in Iowa City. (lol who has academic goals during graduate school.) Yotopia and Cold Stone are the only frozen dairy shops in down town Iowa City. I've already hit up Yotopia, and loved it, so I figured it is about time I hit up Cold Stone. I also had a weird, hectic day and I needed twenty minutes to sit and eat ice cream in peace.

Part of my weird, hectic day involved leaving my phone in my car. So I have no pictures of my treat. Sorry. But not sorry.

So this treat was seasonal for the summer. Yes summer is over, I know. However, there is still more than enough time in fall to try their fall treats, but I'm guessing the days are numbered for the summer ones. Also, I don't think I have ever seen salted butterscotch before. Madeline has had some fantastic butterscotch flavors as of late, and I figured I'd jump on the bandwagon.

This treat is described as French vanilla ice cream with brownie, roasted almonds, and salted butterscotch.

My treat looked kind of like this. EXCEPT FOR THE PART WHERE THERE WAS NO SWIRL IN MINE.

When I ordered it, the guy serving me had to ask the other worker how to make it. If you haven't been to Cold Stone before: A) Do you live under a rock? B) They scoop the ice cream, put it on a cold, stone slab (get it?!?!), put your mix ins on top of the ice cream, then mix it all up with their scooper, chopper implements. They have a ton of sauces and toppings. The guy making mine also didn't know where they kept the salted butterscotch sauce, and had to ask. Sounds like this is not the most popular flavor. I also ordered a "Like It" size, aka small. Cold Stone is like Starbucks in the fact they unnecessarily name their sizes something other than small, medium, and large, only to annoy you. At Cold Stone their sizes are Like It, Love It, and Gotta Have It. When you order a small, they correct you and say, "Would you like the 'Like It' size?" And you are like, yes, you idiot, but I felt ridiculous saying, "Can I have the Salted Butterscotch Brownie in the 'Like It' size?" I also am not a n00b, and I do realize the employees are probably told to correct the customers when they say small, medium, or large, so I did order the "Like It" from the start.

Where to start? Okay. The vanilla. It was a fine, standard, overly sweet and not strongly vanilla-y vanilla. But what would you expect from a big chain shop? Next the brownies. These were definitely the best part. They only put one brownie chunk in, but it is a big chunk, for the amount of ice cream in the Like It. The brownie was not the most moist or dense I have ever had, but it was chewy and fudgey. The roasted almonds were in little chunks, and also added some saltiness to the flavor. The nuttiness contrasted well with the overly sweet vanilla base and brownies.

Now the reason I am not sorry I don't have pictures for you: the salted butterscotch. It was pathetic. I can't even say it was terrible, because it was so sad. I could hardly taste it. I think I got one smidgin of a butterscotch taste the whole treat. I got a bit of sweet/salty when I could find the swirl, but no butterscotch. When the worker made my treat, he loaded on the sauce, he truly did. This is not his fault. But the sauce was pathetic. It disappeared in the ice cream. I understand there is something called the law of conservation of matter, but it must not apply here. There were minuscule parts where I found a pocket of thin, sad liquid. That's it.

Not worth the $5.57 I spent. So sad. Salted butterscotch sounded so interesting and wonderful. This was only sad.