Bobtail Year 2: Salted Caramel Pretzel

February was month nine of Bobtail Year 2, during which I received two pints of homemade ice cream a month from Bobtail.

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Pretzels are among the finest savory foods to crossover to sweet. (Bad news: They often go soft in ice cream. Good news: The solution is covering them in chocolate before mixing them in.) Most manufacturers name their flavor chocolate covered pretzel, then foolishly choose a vanilla base instead of chocolate; a more accurate name would be vanilla-covered-chocolate-covered pretzel. In Bobtail's infinite wisdom, they have chosen a different direction, focusing on the caramel-dipped pretzel as inspiration.

The assumption around a flavor called Salted Caramel Pretzel would be that the ice cream base would be caramel-flavored. I was surprised when it wasn't, but again in their infinite wisdom, Bobtail went a different direction. It is a sweet cream ice cream with lots of runny caramel drizzled throughout. If a person were looking for the perfect ratio of caramel, this would be the example to go by. Every bite has some caramel in it, but not enough to change from the subtle sweet cream base to caramel. And the salt in the caramel is light, not overpowering. So before we've even gotten to the pretzels, this flavor is a success!

I wish there had been more pretzels mixed-in, but that's hardly a criticism anymore since I've said that about every pretzel ice cream I've ever eaten. But the pretzels that are there maintain their crunch(!) and the chocolate coating is tasty. Tasting the pretzel mix-in with the runny caramel in the sweet cream base is rapturous, which is to say something so good it turns you into an insatiable raptor.

Another fine month for Bobtail ice cream.