Provo Adventures Part I: Rockwell Ice Cream Co
So I'm unofficially declaring Provo the ice cream capital of Utah. Over the past weekend a group of us from the math institute I'm visiting went for a hike on Mount Timpanogos and then went to Provo for ice cream, the perfect post-hike activity. We stopped at two shops: Rockwell Ice Cream Co, a more traditional scoop shop and Roll With It Creamery, which does Thai-style rolled ice cream. On the drive out of Provo, I saw at one more ice cream shop, a frozen custard shop, and at least three snow cone places, in addition to BYU Creamery, a chain grocery stores at BYU that produces their own ice cream, hence the declaration of 'Ice Cream Capital of Utah.'
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| What a good looking ice cream crew! Also, thanks Lalit for driving to Provo! |
Most of the flavors at Rockwell Creamery are slightly updated or tweaked versions of classics. For example, their flavor Rockwell Road is Rocky Road but with almond brittle, their Mint Chocolate Chip is made with a mint leaf base, and their Salted Caramel includes cookie pieces.
They also have unique flavors such as Honeycomb, Muddy Buddy, and Biscoff.
There was one thing that immediately made me love Rockwell: they do split scoops. They don't advertise this, but the employee could tell I was having trouble deciding which flavor to get so he let me in on this little piece of knowledge, which made my decision much easier. Since Utah is the Beehive State I had to get the honeycomb, and for my second scoop I split between Rockwell Road and Muddy Buddy.
I'll talk about the texture first since it was consistent across the three flavors. This ice cream was very dense and creamy with just enough air to prevent unpleasant stickiness. I really couldn't ask for better.
Rockwell Road is
Dark chocolate ice cream, almond brittle, and marshmallow swirls.
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| Almond Brittle! |
The chocolate flavor was definitely intense, but I didn't necessarily notice it was dark chocolate as opposed to milk chocolate. It didn't have any of the bitter or dry elements that I typically associate with dark chocolate, but then again, I'm an extremist and like my dark chocolate DARK so others might consider this a dark chocolate base.
Holy moly, the almond brittle was insane. The brittle base was intensely buttery. Normally I think of buttery mix-ins complementing 'white' bases, but it worked SO well with the chocolate. Also, I'm convinced Rockwell had to use magic to stuff as much almond brittle into this flavor as they did. There were at least two huge chunks of brittle per bite, and yet there was still lots of base. Hmmmmm. There was just enough marshmallow swirl to add a bit of delicate sweetness to the flavor, but not so much that it really stood out as a flavor in its own right.
This version of rocky road easily earns 🍦🍦🍦🍦/4 cones. I'm OBSESSED with the almond brittle/chocolate base combo.
Muddy Buddy is
Milk chocolate base, Chex muddy buddy treats, PB swirl.
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| Muddy Buddy! |
The milk chocolate base of Muddy Buddy is the main reason I say that I couldn't tell the Rockwell Road had a dark chocolate base; the milk chocolate base of Muddy Buddy was just as rich and chocolatey and maayyybbbeeee a touch milkier, but not much.
So, I have a question for the world. Why is this the first time I've seen muddy buddies in ice cream?! It seems so obvious, but no one's thought of it! Muddy buddies (or puppy chow) are Chex cereal covered in chocolate, peanut butter, and powdered sugar, so ..... basically crack. There were a lot of muddy buddies in the ice cream, approximately one or two every other bite. I thought they blended in to the chocolate base a bit and would have worked better in a less intense base such as peanut butter.
Like the marshmallow swirl in Rockwell Road, the peanut butter swirl in Muddy Buddy didn't really stand out on its own, but it did help the peanut butter flavor of the muddy buddies stand out.
Muddy Buddy gets 🍦🍦🍦/4 cones just because I wanted the muddy buddies to be more prevalent!
Last but not least: Honey Comb! This flavor is
Vanilla ice cream, honey comb candy chunks.
I thought I had tried honey comb candy before, and I didn't like it. The candy I'm thinking of, also known as sponge candy, has a weird foamy and dry texture that I find very unappealing, so I wasn't really looking forward to this flavor. I don't know what is mixed into this flavor, but it certainly bears very little resemblance to sponge candy. Or maybe the cold of the ice cream improves the texture of the candy. Who knows, who cares, this was delicious.
The vanilla base was great; sweet with just enough real vanilla flavor to stand on its own. (Note that the plain vanilla flavor is described as "hand-scraped vanilla bean" so I'm sure this is the same base used here, so vanilla bean NOT vanilla extract!) I tried really hard to get a good picture of the honey comb candy to show off the texture but failed because it was so gooey that it was hard to isolate it and the honeycomb flavor was on the bottom so it was covered in chocolate. The honey comb was somewhere between a hard candy and a swirl. Most of it was a gooey liquid, but there were more solid chunks mixed in. The honey comb has a light and sweet honey flavor as well as maybe a hint of brown sugar. It worked really well with the natural vanilla flavor of the base.
I'll give this 🍦🍦🍦.5/4 cones. I really enjoyed it, but I'm also interested to see what else people can do with this mix-in.
Overall I cannot recommend Rockwell Ice Cream Co enough. Utahns really know what they're doing when it comes to ice cream!
Gratuitous pics (PC: Lalit Jain) of people contemplating just how awesome this ice cream is:
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