Milk Bar grocery store pints

Milk Bar is a New York City legend. Whether their Cereal Milk soft serve, their pie (formerly known as "crack pie"), or their cake truffles, dessert there is a sweet-toothsome experience. But I have a confession: I've always *liked* Milk Bar, but haven't *loved* Milk Bar. Their sugar-forward approach may give the chic place an adult candy store feel, but to me it was always at the expense of depth of flavor. Until now.

I happened to be walking through the Whole Foods freezer aisle, just taking stock, when I saw that Milk Bar now has grocery store pints! I jumped on the opportunity to buy one of each flavor, praying that this NYC export wasn't the bitter disappointment of Serendipity's grocery store pints. The results of my scientific inquiry? Well, I liked them enough to blog about it, which is saying a lot these days.

From favorite to still-good-but-not-as-good, here are my thoughts:

Cereal Milk: Admittedly, when I eat cereal, I do not drink the milk remnants afterward. To me, it is concentrated sugar, like drinking soda from the machine is too many parts syrup. That said, when I had the Cereal Milk soft serve in New York, I was underwhelmed. It ends up all it needed was more milkfat. Simple and an instant classic, this pint has a subtler sweetness than its namesake, all with crunchy cornflakes mixed in to add some textural diversity. A wonderful flavor.

Cornflake Chocolate Chip Marshmallow: Are you even making ice cream in post-Ben & Jerry's America if you don't have a flavor boasting to have the most crazy chunks mixed in? This long flavor name doesn't even mention that the flavor base aims to taste like cookie dough, something I'm not sure it achieves. What is does taste like is toasted bliss, vaguely s'mores-like. The mix-ins--chocolate chips, more crunchy cornflakes, and the occasional patch of a marshmallow-like substance--only add to the flavor experience, making each bite a little different from the next.

Birthday Cake: In general, I find this flavor trend cloying and something colorful intended for kids, but Milk Bar made it right. Rich and flavorful, my only complaint is that the delicious frosting mix-in (usually the downfall of Birthday Cake ice creams) was in hunks rather than a ripple. This made some bites a bit much.

Pie: A somewhat bland name for an interesting flavor. The "deep vanilla" base has a hint of burnt sugar. With the "gooey butter filling" giving the ice cream a St. Louis "Gooey Butter Cake" effect, this flavor is almost too rich for me...he says still licking the spoon. Lastly, they have some oats mixed in to approximate pie crust, but for me oats just don't work as a mix-in. Sure, they maintain their texture, but they linger too long and end up dominating. Still, a good flavor.

Lost Larson in Chicago

If there's one reason to retcon my Best of Chicago Sweets List, it is Lost Larson. The bakery has become my favorite in Chicago. It's located in Andersonville between two of the neighborhood's longest Swedish holdouts--the Swedish Bakery and the delicatessen--before both tragically disappeared in the past five years. But while Lost Larson is definitely modern, it still keeps things Swedish, offering a lingonberry almond cake, limpa bread and semla, among others delicacies. In addition to their chai latte (the best I've ever had) and their cheddar and kale scone, these are my favorite items from Lost Larson:

(1) Afternoon Tea Bun - To the naked eye, it is a cinnamon roll shape that's merely covered in granulated sugar. Incorrect. There is sugar, lemon zest and earl grey. It is simple, yet mind-blowing. My favorite by far.

(2) Cinnamon Roll Bread Pudding - Like everything at Lost Larson, the cinnamon rolls are good. The cinnamon roll bread pudding, however, is great. Dense and sweet. It may not have a cream cheese frosting, but it doesn't need it.

Afternoon Tea Bun.

(3) any seasonal fruit dough-y pastry - Croissant, danish, whatever they're calling it that day, get it. My favorite is when they have rhubarb, but that is more personal preference than studious recommendation.

(4) Chocolate Passionfruit Caramel Tart - Did I mention they do pastry of the non-dough variety? Lost Larson excels at this, too! What would you say to a dark chocolate tart topped with a caramel that has been flavored with passion fruit? You would say, "Yes. I would like to eat that now, please."

(5) Almond Croissant - Almond croissants were perfected in my mind by West Seattle's Bakery Nouveau. Here at Lost Larson, we have a worthy local option. The almond paste in the middle of this powdered sugar topped delight doesn't taste like marzipan and it doesn't taste like amaretto; it tastes like--who'da thunk?--almonds.

Freezer Faves: Tillamook's Monster Cookie

While this blog is primarily a fan of local scoop shops, it acknowledges that sometimes a person just wants to stay in for the night. That being said, this is one of my Freezer Favorites.

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I was delighted when mid-pandemic, the local Chicago-area grocery stores started carrying the Oregon brand Tillamook. Having lived in the Pacific Northwest, Tillamook's extra creamy ice cream is well-known to me. But enough boasting about my extensive dairy dessert knowledge, on to the blog!

M&M's, oats, chocolate chips, and peanut butter. What makes these cookie ingredients a "monster" you ask? Elementary, my dear blog reader. It is not the cookies that are the monster, but, in fact, you...once you have your first taste of a monster cookie. Om nom nom nom.

Tillamook's Monster Cookie ice cream is my first time hearing of this classic cookie being made into an ice cream. And they knock it out of the park. This isn't bursting with mix-ins, but instead strikes a delicate balance one might not associate with the eponymous baked good: not too much oats, which would result in the still being chewy after the ice cream part has melted away; not too much peanut butter, which could easily overpower the other flavors; and kissed with just enough chocolate chips and wannabe M&M's to elevate the sweetness in every bite.

But the crowning achievement is the ice cream base. Boasting itself to be cookie-dough flavored ice cream, the base is definitely more than your average sweet cream. Were it a blond-folded taste test, would I name the flavor cookie dough (as I would with Thomas Sweet's Chocolate Chip Cookie flavor)? Probably not. But that doesn't stop the base from being exceptionally tasty!

Tillamook's Cookie Monster, I salute you!

Freezer Faves: Signature Select's Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup

 While this blog is primarily a fan of local scoop shops, it acknowledges that sometimes a person just wants to stay in for the night. That being said, this is one of my Freezer Favorites.

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Gasp! Is he really recommending a--double gasp!--grocery store brand ice cream?!? (Clutches pearls.)

I am often confused with being an ice cream snob. But the truth is I appreciate high-brow and low-brow ice creams. Who among us doesn't crave a Dairy Queen blizzard or McDonald's caramel sundae from time to time?

In proclaiming the virtues of this particular flavor, I would argue that that its chocolate base has more of an actual chocolate flavor than most so-called chocolate ice creams. (It still isn't like taking a bite out of a 72% cacao single origin chocolate bar, but one should turn to fresh gelato or even fresh chocolate sorbetto for that.) And, unlike most products offered by the grocery store staple brands Edy's/Dreyer's and Breyer's, this flavor is actually ice cream and not "light ice cream" or "frozen dairy dessert."

Moving beyond the singing the praises of its chocolate base, I must also declare its peanut butter cups to be hunks of joy. Mixed in along with an exceptionally good (but not overpowering) peanut butter swirl, the cups are not in every bite, but are such that I often bargain with myself that I'll stop eating "one more peanut butter cup...no, one more...no, one more..." 

Signature Select's Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup, I salute you!

Freezer Faves: Kemp's White Chocolate Raspberry

While this blog is primarily a fan of local scoop shops, it acknowledges that sometimes a person just wants to stay in for the night. That being said, this is one of my Freezer Favorites.

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"Decadent mascarpone cheesecake ice cream with a luscious raspberry swirl and white chocolaty chips."

Need I go on?

Sure, the base may not scream of mascarpone and there aren't as many raspberry swirls as I'd like, but damned if this flavor ain't the truth. With the white chocolaty flakes packing every bite, this flavor is similar to Häagen-Dazs' Double Belgian Chocolate Chip, in that it utilizes a sweet and creamy base with a differently textured mix-in to produce a chocolate truffle effect, albeit a white chocolate truffle.

When I turned a half gallon of this flavor into a mere two portions, I knew I had my hands on an instant classic.

Kemps' White Chocolate Raspberry, I salute you!

Freezer Faves: Häagen-Dazs' Double Belgian Chocolate Chip

While this blog is primarily a fan of local scoop shops, it acknowledges that sometimes a person just wants to stay in for the night. That being said, this is one of my Freezer Favorites.

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I have blogged about this flavor before. Indeed, it was this flavor that inspired me to share my extensive ice cream knowledge on the blogging platform when a co-worker I had a decade-and-a-half ago falsely claimed there were no good American chocolate ice creams. And this flavor was once considered my all-time favorite ice cream flavor. But while my palate has become more refined over the years, there is no denying that Häagen-Dazs' Double Belgian Chocolate Chip still kicks serious butt.

While it has gone through a number of name changes over the years--Belgian Chocolate Chocolate to the simplified Belgian Chocolate to its new, most accurate name--the flavor has remained the same. A pint of creamy chocolate ice cream that is nearly fifty-percent dark chocolate shavings. Every single bite is equal parts ice cream and shavings so delicate and small that they are nearly indistinguishable from the base were it not for their full-bodied punch of flavor. The effect is that of a chocolate truffle ice cream with two types and textures of chocolate blending into a wholly original experience.

Häagen-Dazs' Double Belgian Chocolate Chip, I salute you!

Freezer Faves: Talenti's Roman Raspberry

While this blog is primarily a fan of local scoop shops, it acknowledges that sometimes a person just wants to stay in for the night. That being said, this is one of my Freezer Favorites.

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When my lactose-intolerant lady friend told me her favorite dairy-free grocery store option was made by Talenti, I balked. I've never been impressed with their gelato. Quite frankly, I thought their gelato stunk and tasted of the plastic container it came in.

Enter Roman Raspberry dairy-free sorbetto.

Soft, scoop-able sorbet. None of that icy block that you have to scrape and scrape and scrape away at until you eventually get a satisfying amount onto your spoon. And the flavor envelops your taste buds with tart berry flavor that forces you to pause a moment to savor before dipping your spoon in for more.

 

Now, authetic, fresh sorbetto is comprised of merely sugar, water and the fruity flavoring agent, be it fruit or juice. Talenti's Roman Raspberry contains more than that; it is a mass-produced grocery store product so of course there are preservatives...but the final product has only six ingredients! Ultimately, though, one should trust the taste buds. It is so close to being the real thing, one might question if, in fact, it is the real thing. I dare say it is.

Talenti's Roman Raspberry, I salute you!

Pandemic Land Special: What's Good in the Grocery Store?

There hasn't been a ton to report on dessert-wise during pandemic times. I am limited to the spots that are walking distance from my apartment. But while I prefer to review local spots, the pandemic has allowed me to settle in with a few new grocery store favorites AKA my Freezer Faves. This week I will be reporting on my best new discoveries as well as a few old stand-bys. Scroll on for more...