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Category: Ice Cream (Page 1 of 3)

A Day in the Napa Valley: A Roman Holiday Gelato

September 10, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Napa is not just for wine.

After champagne tasting at Mumm, we had some time to kill before our next wine tasting experience in Calistoga, so we headed back to St. Helena for some ice cream at A Roman Holiday Gelato.

The small shop serves ice cream and sells espresso, coffee and tea. The ice cream changes from time to time, so you need to check the board for that day’s offerings.

They have set up tables and chair outside, under big umbrellas and it was actually quite pleasant to sit there, even in a rather hot summer afternoon. Even though it’s on the street just around the corner from the main one, it was a sleepy Saturday afternoon, and the only traffic were people going to the salon next door. We had a pretty pleasant time sitting there.

Mike got a cup of watermelon sorbet ($5) and he was actually a bit disappointed. The sorbet was actually a bit too sweet and it did not really have much of a watermelon flavor. I wonder if they used commercial watermelon juice (which doesn’t taste like watermelon either) instead of fresh watermelon.

My cup of brown butter chocolate chip cookie gelato ($5), on the other hand, was fantastic. I’m not sure if the brown butter referred to the ice cream or the cookie, but they were both terrific. The cookie had a rich, caramelized flavor and the ice cream was bright and flavorful and a great contrast. I was nice and shared it with Mike, because it was his birthday – but I’d eat a whole cup on my own. 

A Roman Holiday Gelato
1336 Oak Ave Suite A
St Helena, CA 
W-Mo 12 PM - 7 PM

Trader Joe’s Super Strawberry Sorbet Review

August 6, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Good but Generic

When I grew up in Argentina, ice cream was a special occasion treat. It was a time when home freezer weren’t good enough to keep it frozen, so commercial brands specialized in cones and bars that you’d buy and eat as you went. When we wanted ice cream, we had to go to the ice-cream store. And it was (and is!) expensive – a treat we’d only get after we got our report cards (fortunately they came every two months during the school year).

I’d always order a cone with dulce de leche granizado ice cream and either pineapple or strawberry sorbet. I’ve been chasing those memories of those amazing sorbets ever since – nothing can ever match those childhood memories.

It’s thus not surprising that Trader Joe’s Super Strawberry Sorbet didn’t come close either. It’s good, don’t get me wrong, with bright, intense strawberry flavor. But it’s a tad too sweet, a tad too creamy, and a tad too processed. On the plus side, I didn’t like it enough to feel compel to eat more than few spoons of it.

What turned me off more than anything was the texture. I think the weird creaminess comes from the maltodextrin, a high glycemic index carb which acts as a binder and adds a gummy texture.

The pint package was $4, which is cheaper than supermarket brands at regular price (but I only buy ice cream when it’s on sale).

Ben & Jerry’s Impretzively Fudged ice cream review

July 25, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Salty and crunch chocolate ice cream

Impretzively Fudged is another new Ben & Jerry’s flavor destined to not last for long. The creativity of their ice cream stuff seems to have long gone down the hill and they are now just simply mixing ingredients from their other flavors, not tasting them but hoping one will catch on by magic.

This flavor consists of chocolate ice cream with fudge-crusted pretzel pieces and a pretzel swirl. Basically, it’s a salty and crunchy chocolate ice cream. The chocolate flavor is too strong to let any of the mild pretzel flavor come through, but the pretzels and the pretzel swirl do contribute a light saltiness. I wasn’t a fan of it because I’m just not a fan of chocolate ice cream – but as a fan of salted caramel, I appreciated the salty flavor here as well. And I do like crunch in my ice cream, so that was a plus. Still, I do find chocolate ice cream boring and I won’t finish up the tub (not a bad thing)

Ben & Jerry’s Marshmallow Sky & PF S’more Review

July 22, 2024 / / 0 Comments

These marshmallow flavor ice creams are too sweet and lack flavor.

Ben & Jerry’s introduced two new limited edition marshmallow ice creams and we should all be thankful they’re limited edition. While I bought them on sale at Safeway (regular price is now $7, or 40% more than the $5 they were before the pandemic), I disliked them so much that I feel ripped off – enough that I won’t buy another limited edition flavor without first reading reviews.

Marshmallow Sky consists of marshmallow ice cream with marshmallow swirls and gobs of chocolate chip cookie dough and chocolate chocolate chip cookie dough.

The ice cream itself has no discernible flavor. It was sweet and that’s all I can say about it. It didn’t even taste like sweet cream – just sweetness. The marshmallow swirls were very thin and just added extra sweetness – sweetness upon sweetness and no flavor. The cookie dough globs tasted like what you would expect them to. I’m not a huge fan of cookie dough, but here they were welcomed as they broke through the otherwise tasteless ice cream.

This bright blue ice cream seems to be geared towards children, and I can see them liking it. Adults should give it a pass.

PB S’more is a toasted marshmallow ice cream with peanut butter cups, graham cracker pieces and a marshmallow swirl. It suffered from the same basic problem as Marshmallow Sky, the base ice cream was sweet but otherwise mostly flavorless. The burn marshmallow flavor did give it the occasional caramel note which I did enjoy – as it broke with the monotony of plain sweetness -, so it made it slightly better than the other one, but not much. The marshmallow swirls were thicker, but all they managed to do was added extra sweetness. I like marshmallow fluff, but I think it’s better used on an ice cream with more bitter notes – chocolate, for example. The same can be said about the graham cracker swirl – the tiny crumbs can’t be call pieces. Still, they did add a new flavor. The peanut butter cups were good, as they always are, but discordant with the rest of the vibe of the ice cream. Peanut butter smores might be good – I’ll have to try them – but this ice cream did not make you think of smores at all. It made you think of putting it back in the freezer and drinking something to wash the sweetness away.

Bubbies Mochi Review

July 16, 2024 / / 1 Comment

The Ube Purple Yam flavor made me a fan

I’m not the biggest fan of mochi, a Japanese pastry made from glutinous rice, so I surprised myself when I added these Bubbies mochi ice cream treats to my cart after I came across them while online shopping at Safeway. I was also surprised at how much I ended up liking them.

The treats consist of flavored ice cream wrapped in a thin layer of mochi. The mochi is chewy and gelatinous, but thin enough that it actually complements the ice cream.

Ube, a purple yam from the Philippines, has a difficult to describe flavor, which to me is utterly forgettable – probably for this very reason. It’s sweet and somewhat fruity, pretty subtle and filled with umami.

The results were for a very enjoyable, not very sweet, treat. It actually made me think it’s something my grandmother would have enjoyed – which only confirms the fact that I’ve gotten old.

The treats come in a wide variety of flavors, though only a couple where available at my local Safeway. I’m totally intrigued about some of the others – blood orange, milk tea and passion fruit sound particularly interested – but I’ll have to wait to find them elsewhere. The package of 6 was $4 on sale at Safeway, but they usually sell for $7.50

Update

I also tried the matcha green tea mochi and I was surprised at how much I liked them. I’m not a huge fan of matcha, though the flavor has been slowly growing on me in the last few years. Here, I actually appreciated it. Once again I liked the consistency of the thin mochi and the light ice cream, but also appreciated how lightly flavored and sweetened the ice cream was. It was quite refreshing in a summer day. I won’t rush to order it again, I’m still not a matcha devotee, but I’ll finish the box.

San Leandro Bites: KoolFi Ice Cream @ the Cherry Festival

June 4, 2024 / / 1 Comment

KoolFi Ice Cream is a local favorite, but does it live up to the hype?

Saturday was the Cherry Festival in San Leandro. Now that my children are gone, I don’t feel the need to join the crowds in watching a parade and listening to music, so I happily stayed home. My husband, however, is a huge fan of festivals and local activities, so not only did he go, but he brought me some ice cream from KoolFi Creamery, the Indian ice cream shop that all my friends rave about. KoolFi was having a special cherry flavor for the festival, and though Mike doesn’t like cherries, he had to try it.

This was not our first time trying KoolFi ice cream. My wonderful friend Elektra had gotten me a sampler for my birthday (I think) last year, which I’d much appreciated, even if I hadn’t been a huge fan of any of the flavors – I guess Indian flavors are not my thing.

The ice cream was, as you can expect, somewhat melted by the time Mike got it home, but I don’t think that affected it much. He had the cherry with chocolate flakes and was quite happy with it. I tried it, and frankly the chocolate flavor predominated. It was good. I had the mango lassi flavor, and I enjoyed it as well. I particularly liked the smoothness, even silkiness of the ice cream. I didn’t think, however, that it was so much better than other ice creams as to justify the steep price – I think it was $7 for a rather small scoop. The ice cream is organic, however.

KoolFi Creamery
599 MacArthur Blvd
San Leandro, CA
415-390-6210
W - Su 3 PM - 9 PM

Apple Pie Granita – Recipe

December 29, 2020 / / 0 Comments

This apple pie granita tastes exactly like frozen apple pie, and it’s absolutely delicious. I served it as a palate cleanser for my 2020 Christmas Eve dinner, though it’s probably too sweet for that. It would work just as well as dessert. Everyone enjoyed it nonetheless.

I made it using Martinelli’s apple juice rather than “natural-style apple juice” like the original recipe called for, because that’s what I had at home. If I made it again using regular apple juice, as I did, I’d probably reduce the sugar to 1/4 cup or leave it off altogether.

Ingredients

  • 3 cups apple juice
  • 1/4 to 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 1/2 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
  • 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
  • a dash of nutmeg
  • a dash of allspice

Instructions

Place all ingredients in a medium saucepan and heat over medium heat until sugar dissolves, about 3 minutes. Transfer it to an 8″x8″ glass baking dish. Place in the freezer until the sides start to freeze, about 1 to 2 hours. Using a fork, break and mix and put back in the freezer for another 2 hours. Break again with a fork and transfer to small serving glasses. Keep in the freezer until ready to serve.

Based on Emerile Lagasse’s recipe at Food & Wine magazine.

2020 Christmas Eve Dinner

Marga’s favorite recipes – Marga’s Party & Holiday Recipes

Not really ice cream reviews: Gelateria Italiana vs. Tempt

July 15, 2013 / / 0 Comments

(Note: These companies have closed)

First of all, let me start by saying that I feel like a complete jerk for blogging about ice cream after reading this article about the torturous conditions in which California inmates find themselves, and hearing from a friend of mine who is a prison lawyer, that water was being rationed in California women’s prisons during the heat wave we had last week.

Be that as it may, not blogging about ice cream won’t change any of that, so here it goes.  These are two new, for me, brands of ice-cream-like products that I found at Grocery Outlet, here in San Leandro.

Gelateria Italiana

I tried both their Hazelnut & Chocolate and Pistachio flavors.  The Hazelnut & chocolate one was divine.  It tasted exactly like you would expect it to taste, but it was lighter that your regular gelato.  The Pistachio was pretty good as well, but less exciting because, after all, pistachio ice cream gets boring after a whole.

The ice cream comes all the way from Italy and I would fully recommend it but for its ingredients.  The first two ingredients are what you’d expect: milk and sugar (I guess no cream in gelato), but we then encounter “glucose syrup” – which is basically like corn syrup, but not necessarily from corn – and then “refined vegetable oil”.  Say what?  What is oil doing in my ice cream? I’ve made ice cream many times and gelato a few, but never, never have I heard of using oil.  I might have thought the oil was for cooking the hazelnuts, but it comes before “roasted hazelnut paste” as an ingredient, which means there is more of it than hazelnuts.

The gelato came in a 30 oz tub (so not quite a quart) and cost about $3 at GO.

temptTempt

What tempted me to try Tempt Coffee Biscotti “frozen dessert” ($2 for a pint at GO) was that it’s main ingredient: hemp milk.  Sure, I knew there would be nothing “naughty” in the ice cream, but I like the idea of supporting the hemp industry.  Alas, the “ice cream” was very disappointing.  The texture is nice enough, quite creamy, but the ice cream’s flavor is very mild and somewhat off putting.  According to my daughter, the after taste is better than the taste, however.  Tempt could probably improve this flavor, at least, by using more coffee so the coffee flavor is stronger, but they should also forgo the soggy, flavorless, gluten-free biscotti.

Tempt uses mostly organic ingredients, chief among them rice, but it also includes oil in its formula.  In all, it’s probably not a terrible choice for vegans, but others will probably want to avoid it.

 

Three Twins Chocolate Peanut Butter Ice Cream Review – Yummm!

July 2, 2013 / / 1 Comment

(Note: This company has closed)

3twinsChocolatePeanutButterI found this gem of an ice cream at our local San Leandro Grocery Outlet for $2.  It was the first time I came across a three twins product, but I’m one of those people who absolutely loves peanut butter and chocolate (as I write this, I’m plotting to make my husband go and get me the ingredients for a peanut butter shake), so I had to try it.  I’m glad I did.

Unlike most ice creams of this type, this wasn’t chocolate ice cream with swirls of peanut butter or vice versa. Instead both the peanut butter and the cocoa powder are mixed together into a combined flavor.  I think I still prefer the traditional type, but this is quite good too, albeit more peanut butter would be better.  Then again, nothing stops you from adding your own.

My oldest daughter pronounced it the “best ice cream ever”, and while my youngest wasn’t as enthusiastic, this is a girl with a limited like for sweets.

Three Twins seems to be this century’s answer to Ben & Jerry’s.  The company is based in the North Bay and makes organic ice cream from locally sourced milk and cream.  They have four stores and they seem to mostly sell through Whole Foods (which would explain why I never heard of them).  In addition to regular flavors, they have some interesting sounding ones such as cardamon, lemon cookie and sea salted caramel.  They sell ice cream through their website for $10 a pint, so the $2 Grocery Outlet price is particularly tempting.

Maple Nut Ice Cream – Recipe

January 1, 2011 / / 1 Comment

I wanted to make ice cream to go with the purported buche de Noel my friend Lola was bringing for Xmas Eve dinner. I wanted something creamy, refreshing, with a light flavor that would go well with the cake regardless of its flavors. I wanted it to be simple, and doable with whatever I had at home. My original plan had been to make this salted caramel ice cream, but I decided at the last moment that it was too complicated, and as I searched for other recipes the idea of making maple ice cream came to mind. I had loved it as a child, when my grandmother used to make it from the tiny bottles of maple extract she’d gotten during her last trip to the United States, before my birth, and for that reason it still holds a warm place in my hand. Plus, it’s very simple to make and I had maple syrup at home.
The following is the recipe I made, from the Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Ice Cream & Dessert Book. It’s a great recipe, the results gave me a smooth, tasty ice cream which I loved (though not as much as granny’s).
Maple Nut Ice Cream
2 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
2 cups whipping cream
1 cup milk
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup walnuts, chopped
Put eggs in a large bowl and whisk them until light and fluffy. Whisk in the sugar, a little at the time, until completely mixed in. Whisk in the cream and milk. Pour into the ice cream machine and process according to the instructions.
Two minutes before the ice cream is done add the maple syrup and then the walnuts. Finish processing, pour into a freezer safe container and freeze overnight.
Christmas Eve 2010 menu
Marga’s Best Recipes

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