Jeni's St. Louis Scoop Shop
For Labor Day weekend, I travelled home to St. Louis to visit friends and family. Although the available options for frozen dessert in Iowa City are high quality, there aren't nearly as many as there are in St. Louis. Frankly because St. Louis is bigger than Iowa City. So, of course, I spent all four hours of my drive from Iowa City to St. Louis agonizing over where to go to get frozen dessert. Go for the classic with Ted Drewes? A new favorite with Ices Plain and Fancy?? The underrated, but fun I Scream Cakes??? The family friendly atmosphere of Serendipity???? Ahh what is a girl to do?
Luckily, my friend Bronwyn reminded me the new Jeni's Scoop Shop in the Central West End was finally open after all of the listeria nonsense. She lives in the Central West End now, so after hanging out and studying with her for a while and one of her medical school friends, we decided to hit up Jeni's.
Upon first entering the building I was shocked by how many flavors Jeni's offered. The counter of ice cream containers was incredibly long! However, after closer inspection, I realized they had two containers of every flavor. So they had half as many flavors offered at a time, but there were still plenty of choices.
The two flavors I chose were Salted Peanut Butter with Chocolate Flecks and Brown Butter Almond Brittle. I feel like I have been in a nut brittle mood as of late. Mostly because I didn't know I liked nut brittles until recently. And I do like them, a lot. What have I been doing with my life not eating them. As for the Salted Peanut Butter, I chose this flavor because I appreciate when ice cream makers recognize salty/sweet as a delicious combination outside of salted caramel. (Although one could argue Jeni's is largely responsible for the salted caramel craze and it was one of the offerings.)
The Salted Peanut Butter with Chocolate Flecks is described as Salted ground roasted peanuts with crunchy dark chocolate throughout- AKA The Buckeye State. Inspired by Ohio's favorite confection, the peanut butter chocolate candy known as the Buckeye.
Jeni's definitely did the salty/sweet combo well even outside of salted caramel. The peanut butter base was lightly peanut butter flavored, creamy, quite sweet, and a medium amount of salty. There were thin swirls of peanut butter adding little umphs of peanut butter flavor, which weren't as sweet and a bit saltier than the base. The chocolate flecks were small, hard, and brittle dark chocolate. The bitter of the chocolate added nice dimension of flavor to this ice cream. Bitter/salty/sweet is definitely leveling up from salty/sweet. In addition, the flecks were frequent enough to add textural variation, but not so frequent to be the dominant flavor. All in all, this was a high quality, delicious flavor. It didn't do anything new or radical or crazy, but what it did it did well. I also feel like, quite frequently, chocolate peanut butter flavors emphasize the chocolate as opposed to the peanut butter, and it was nice to see the opposite.
The Brown Butter Almond Brittle is described as Brown-butter-and-toasted-almond candy crushed into vanilla buttercream ice cream with honey. Inspired by the Scandinavian dessert krokan (caramelized sugar with butter and almonds), which was Charlie the Chocolate Factory author Roald Dahl's favorite treat.
I loved this flavor. The browned butter caramelized flavor was light, yet prominent, with an extra touch of honey sweetness. There was also the flavor of marzipan throughout the entire scoop. I love marzipan, and I'm glad there was a touch of the almond extract-y flavor there, in addition to the toasted almond. The candy pieces were awesome. They were crunchy and thick and a bit chewey. While the base was mild, these pieces provided strong punches of caramelized almond flavor. If one can put other nut ice creams in a separate category from peanut ice creams, I would say this is my favorite other nut flavor I've ever had. If you like nuts and brittles, you need to go to Jeni's and get this flavor.
Lastly, a note on overall experience. I paid $5.43 for my ice cream and I could have eaten way more. Granted, I was super hungry at the time, but you are not going to get bang for your buck quantity at Jeni's. However, I did like the fact they gave me a slice of cone, even though I ordered my ice cream in a dish. I like cones, but eating ice cream in a cone when you want to review it is too much of a high pressure situation in my opinion.
Luckily, my friend Bronwyn reminded me the new Jeni's Scoop Shop in the Central West End was finally open after all of the listeria nonsense. She lives in the Central West End now, so after hanging out and studying with her for a while and one of her medical school friends, we decided to hit up Jeni's.
Upon first entering the building I was shocked by how many flavors Jeni's offered. The counter of ice cream containers was incredibly long! However, after closer inspection, I realized they had two containers of every flavor. So they had half as many flavors offered at a time, but there were still plenty of choices.
The two flavors I chose were Salted Peanut Butter with Chocolate Flecks and Brown Butter Almond Brittle. I feel like I have been in a nut brittle mood as of late. Mostly because I didn't know I liked nut brittles until recently. And I do like them, a lot. What have I been doing with my life not eating them. As for the Salted Peanut Butter, I chose this flavor because I appreciate when ice cream makers recognize salty/sweet as a delicious combination outside of salted caramel. (Although one could argue Jeni's is largely responsible for the salted caramel craze and it was one of the offerings.)
The Salted Peanut Butter with Chocolate Flecks is described as Salted ground roasted peanuts with crunchy dark chocolate throughout- AKA The Buckeye State. Inspired by Ohio's favorite confection, the peanut butter chocolate candy known as the Buckeye.
Jeni's definitely did the salty/sweet combo well even outside of salted caramel. The peanut butter base was lightly peanut butter flavored, creamy, quite sweet, and a medium amount of salty. There were thin swirls of peanut butter adding little umphs of peanut butter flavor, which weren't as sweet and a bit saltier than the base. The chocolate flecks were small, hard, and brittle dark chocolate. The bitter of the chocolate added nice dimension of flavor to this ice cream. Bitter/salty/sweet is definitely leveling up from salty/sweet. In addition, the flecks were frequent enough to add textural variation, but not so frequent to be the dominant flavor. All in all, this was a high quality, delicious flavor. It didn't do anything new or radical or crazy, but what it did it did well. I also feel like, quite frequently, chocolate peanut butter flavors emphasize the chocolate as opposed to the peanut butter, and it was nice to see the opposite.
The Brown Butter Almond Brittle is described as Brown-butter-and-toasted-almond candy crushed into vanilla buttercream ice cream with honey. Inspired by the Scandinavian dessert krokan (caramelized sugar with butter and almonds), which was Charlie the Chocolate Factory author Roald Dahl's favorite treat.
I loved this flavor. The browned butter caramelized flavor was light, yet prominent, with an extra touch of honey sweetness. There was also the flavor of marzipan throughout the entire scoop. I love marzipan, and I'm glad there was a touch of the almond extract-y flavor there, in addition to the toasted almond. The candy pieces were awesome. They were crunchy and thick and a bit chewey. While the base was mild, these pieces provided strong punches of caramelized almond flavor. If one can put other nut ice creams in a separate category from peanut ice creams, I would say this is my favorite other nut flavor I've ever had. If you like nuts and brittles, you need to go to Jeni's and get this flavor.
Lastly, a note on overall experience. I paid $5.43 for my ice cream and I could have eaten way more. Granted, I was super hungry at the time, but you are not going to get bang for your buck quantity at Jeni's. However, I did like the fact they gave me a slice of cone, even though I ordered my ice cream in a dish. I like cones, but eating ice cream in a cone when you want to review it is too much of a high pressure situation in my opinion.
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