Red Button Creamery Black Licorice

Lizzy and I started this blog because we love ice cream and we wanted to share this love with the world.  One thing I love about writing this blog, which I did not anticipate at all, is interacting with readers who are sharing their own love of ice cream with us.  I recently had an awesome interaction with reader Rachel C. who gave me tons and tons of great information about good ice cream shops in Utah, several brands to try, and some typically 'Utah' flavors.

Red Button Vintage Creamery is one of the brands she recommended, and specifically their Black Licorice Flavor.  As chance would have it, I already had a container of this in my freezer!  The blurb about this flavor on the website reads

A flavor for the more refined palate, our Black Licorice ice cream is a decadent and luxurious treat your tastebuds will love.

Cute packaging!

Not exactly descriptive of the flavor, but you don't really need much description of black licorice, I suppose.

So, I'm definitely drawn to weird flavors.  The weirder it is, the harder it is for me to pass it up.  I don't love black licorice, but I don't hate it either.  I eat the black jelly beans, but I eat them first to get them out of the way.  At the grocery store, I saw several other Red Button Vintage Creamery flavors that I thought I would like more than Black Licorice, and I was actually a bit worried that I straight-up wouldn't like this flavor, but I just couldn't pass it up.

I liked this flavor way more than I thought I would.  If you're a black licorice lover trying to convince your skeptical friends that black licorice is delicious, I would recommend using black licorice ice cream as a gateway drug of sorts.

Black licorice is typically a very strong flavor, balancing sweetness, saltiness, and spiciness.  The flavoring comes from the liquorice plant, but tastes very similar to anise or fennel.  The addition of dairy really mellows out the salty/spicy elements that are typically the parts of black licorice that people object to and lets the sweetness shine.  This leads to a mild, yet still very clear, black licorice taste.  The dairy flavor and black licorice flavor are definitely distinct, but they complement each other very well.

I think the color of the ice cream was my favorite part of this flavor.  It was a lovely blueish-purpleish-black that I've never seen before.

The texture was pretty decent, although slightly on the airy side (this is premium ice cream, not super premium, so about par for the course for this quality) and a bit sticky.  The first bowl I had, the ice cream wasn't quite frozen and it was quite difficult to unstick a scoop-ful.

I'll give this 🍦🍦.5/4 cones.  I was surprised by how much I liked this flavor, and I think a die-hard black licorice lover might give it a higher rating.