Haagen-Dazs Limited Edition Peppermint Bark

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Woe is me! I've had to review sooooo many Haagen-Dazs flavors recently.  That's what happens when your local grocery store has a 3 for $9 sale on Haagen-Dazs pints.  (If you didn't pick up on it, this is sarcasm.  If you didn't know it was sarcasm, you probably don't know me.)

Haagen-Dazs produces their Peppermint Bark ice cream every year beginning around Thanksgiving.  I'm glad I was alone in the ice cream aisle when I saw this on shelves for the first time this year because I let out a whoop of joy!  I love this stuff so much.  The blurb about this flavor from the Haagen-Dazs website reads

Celebrate the season with our rendition of this holiday classic.  Rich white chocolate ice cream is blended with crunchy chocolately peppermint bark and peppermint candy pieces.
I love the purple Limited Edition packaging!
 I am a whole-hearted white chocolate lover.  White chocolate is a divisive flavor, but I think a lot of people who dislike it dislike it because it's not chocolate.  You just have to change your mentality and realize that white chocolate is a whole different thing than chocolate (it uses cocoa butter instead of the cocoa solids that give chocolate its chocolately-ness), and it is not trying to be chocolate.  If you can do that, then you too can begin to love white chocolate.


Haagen-Dazs is the only major brand I can think of that does a white chocolate ice cream, and they do it to perfection, both in this flavor and in their White Chocolate Raspberry Truffle, one of my favorite flavors of all time.  The beauty of the Haagen-Dazs white chocolate base lies in its subtlety It constantly flies juuuuuuust beneath your taste radar.  You don't realize how awesome it is until you realize how boring the flavor would be with a sweet cream or vanilla base.  At that moment, the sublime beauty of the white chocolate ice cream shines through.  It has a light sweetness with just enough fattiness to give it a round and complete flavor.

Peppermint candy chunks

The peppermint bark came in small chunks liberally distributed throughout the entire pint.  The peppermint bark had two layers.  The bottom layer was minty chocolate, very similar (nearly identical) to Andes Chocolate Mints.  Peppermint candies (you know those round red-and-white-striped hard candies? Of course you do) made of the top layer.  These pieces had a nice crunch to them and gave the flavor some good textural variation.  Sometimes chunks that are too crunchy can interrupt one's ice cream eating flow, but this was not the case here as the chunks were so small.


I really liked the mint/peppermint combo afforded by the two layers of the peppermint bark.  It gave this flavor a level of complexity sorely lacking in other peppermint ice creams.

If you've not tried this limited edition Haagen-Dazs flavor, make sure to try it before it's gone!


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