Contented Cow Creamery Mocha Chip
With the current end-of-summer lack of new and exciting ice creams, I decided to stop in at trusty Tim and Tom's Speedy Market to see if they had any interesting ice creams stocked, and they did not disappoint. I picked up a half-pint of new-to-me, Minnesota-made Contented Cow Creamery Mocha Chip.
Contented Cow Creamery was started by two Carleton College students. They source their dairy, maple syrup, and honey from Minnesota, and use Peace Coffee for their Mocha Chip flavor. You can read more about the business here and on their facebook page.
I really, really wanted to like this ice cream. It's such a great story. College students! Local dairy farmers! Unfortunately, I didn't think the ice cream was quite up to par. Some of the issue may be with Tim and Tom's and not with the ice cream itself, and I'll try to point out the causes of the issues as I bring them up.
The coffee base is made with Peace Coffee, a local organization that sources and roasts fair trade coffee. The superb quality of Peace Coffee showed through in the flavor of the base. Alas, the coffee flavor wasn't particularly strong, and I lost it after the first two or three bites.
It sounds blasphemous to say an ice cream had too many mix-ins, but I think there were too many chocolate chips in Mocha Chip. I know! Insanity! The chips seemed like your standard chocolate chips, somewhere between sweet chocolate chips and semi-sweet baking chips. I think the flavor was spot on; a sweeter chip would have been lost in the base. As you can see in the picture below, this flavor has tons of chips, but there were so many and were so crunchy and dry that they distracted from the flavor of the base and made the ice cream difficult to eat.
The article linked above states that Contented Cow Creamery has, at 35%, a very low overrun, and has a 14% butter fat content. With these stats, I expected the texture to be thick and creamy, but instead it was watery and icy. A thicker texture would have helped the chips stand out less. To be fair, I've had texture issues with other ice creams I've purchased from Tim and Tom's. For example, I've purchased icy pints from brands such as Ben and Jerry's and Graeter's who both tend to have a pretty standardized texture. I don't know if Tim and Tom's freezers aren't the best or if they don't stock their ice cream right away, but I suspect somewhere along the line the ice cream gets a pretty good chance to melt and then refreezes.
With the texture and mix-in issues, I rate Mocha Chip š¦.5/4, BUT I am totally willing to give this brand another try (just maybe from a scoop shop instead of a grocery store).
Contented Cow Creamery was started by two Carleton College students. They source their dairy, maple syrup, and honey from Minnesota, and use Peace Coffee for their Mocha Chip flavor. You can read more about the business here and on their facebook page.
I really, really wanted to like this ice cream. It's such a great story. College students! Local dairy farmers! Unfortunately, I didn't think the ice cream was quite up to par. Some of the issue may be with Tim and Tom's and not with the ice cream itself, and I'll try to point out the causes of the issues as I bring them up.
The coffee base is made with Peace Coffee, a local organization that sources and roasts fair trade coffee. The superb quality of Peace Coffee showed through in the flavor of the base. Alas, the coffee flavor wasn't particularly strong, and I lost it after the first two or three bites.
It sounds blasphemous to say an ice cream had too many mix-ins, but I think there were too many chocolate chips in Mocha Chip. I know! Insanity! The chips seemed like your standard chocolate chips, somewhere between sweet chocolate chips and semi-sweet baking chips. I think the flavor was spot on; a sweeter chip would have been lost in the base. As you can see in the picture below, this flavor has tons of chips, but there were so many and were so crunchy and dry that they distracted from the flavor of the base and made the ice cream difficult to eat.
The article linked above states that Contented Cow Creamery has, at 35%, a very low overrun, and has a 14% butter fat content. With these stats, I expected the texture to be thick and creamy, but instead it was watery and icy. A thicker texture would have helped the chips stand out less. To be fair, I've had texture issues with other ice creams I've purchased from Tim and Tom's. For example, I've purchased icy pints from brands such as Ben and Jerry's and Graeter's who both tend to have a pretty standardized texture. I don't know if Tim and Tom's freezers aren't the best or if they don't stock their ice cream right away, but I suspect somewhere along the line the ice cream gets a pretty good chance to melt and then refreezes.
With the texture and mix-in issues, I rate Mocha Chip š¦.5/4, BUT I am totally willing to give this brand another try (just maybe from a scoop shop instead of a grocery store).
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