Classic Frozen Custard in Des Moines, IA

My only pair of shoes are wet, my umbrella is only mildly helping, and we've arrived in Des Moines much later than I had hoped after a 350 mile drive from Chicago. There isn't anywhere else I'd rather be than studying the menu at a clearly storied frozen custard stand. The spot is Classic Frozen Custard. I'm curious what this place looks like in the daytime, because it ain't much to look at at night. Luckily the menu is looking real nice.

Most frozen custard spots only have three flavors: vanilla, chocolate, and a flavor of the day. Here at Classic Frozen Custard, their worn out signage shows nine(!) flavors and all of them sound tasty. I observe that this place is, as their name suggests, a classic custard joint with the huge machine behind the counter, not one of these new, fangled places serving up fancily named soft serve. So how does one explain the veritable cornucopia of options here? Either they don't make it fresh every day--no biggie--or they do good enough business that they are constantly in production. Given that the stand is both run-down and busy, it could go either way. That said, it's after 9:30pm on a Wednesday in Iowa and there has been a constant stream of cars in the drive-thru, plus a few chilly customers like me at the walk-up window.

After much chin stroking, I settle on a tree nut sampler: butter pecan, caramel cashew, and coconut. After they bring me more than a pint of freshly scooped frozen custard, a take it back to the car to enjoy. My lactose intolerant wife-to-be agrees that this place looks LEGIT, takes a Lactaid, and digs in to the butter pecan. She and I are both taken aback by how good it is. The caramel cashew is even better, but only by a hair. And the coconut (also euphoric) is chock full of toasted coconut bits.

This place is real good, y'all. Their menu is more than just scoops of custard, too; they offer twisters, sundaes, malts, shakes, and root beer floats, so there's something for everyone. If you're headed to Caitlin Clark's birthplace, stop at Classic Frozen Custard. "Once you lick it, you'll luv it!"

Macaron Bar (multiple Midwest locations)

I didn't truly understand macarons until I went to Paris in 2018. The place that did the trick for me was Pierre Hermé, which I've already blogged about. Since a new spot has opened up here in Andersonville-- Macaron Bar--I decided to give it a try. I walked through the doors and quickly realized that narrowing down to a few options would be a trial. I committed to a 12-pack, being sure to buy two with the same flavors so my sweetie and I could do a taste test.

Overall, the flavor varieties were mostly classic with an imaginative flare, the sweetness level was subtle and never cloying, and the texture was right--soft and slightly chewy, but with that fragile shell.

Here is my ranking of the flavors I tried, which is very close to my sweetie's ranking.

The best:

(1) Pistachio

(2) Snickerdoodle

(3) Black Raspberry Chocolate

(4) Earl Grey Tea

(5) Dark Chocolate

(6) Coconut

The rest:

(7) Hazelnut

(8) Salted Caramel

(9) Red Velvet

(10) Chicago Mix

(11) Lemon Lavender

(12) Strawberry Chocolate

Macaron Bar is a small chain, mostly located in the Midwest. Locations are on their website. Worth the try!

Marco-brand grocery store pints

The tagline of Marco brand ice cream is "Culinary flavors. Global traditions." And with their roster of favors, they certainly live up to it: Turkish Mocha, Aztec Chocolate, Green Tea & White Chocolate, Moroccan Honey Nut, Dulce de Leche & Cookies, Vanilla Chai...and, uh, Peanut Butter Caramel. I bought five of the flavors to sample and review. Here they are listed from favorite to least favorite:

Dulce de Leche & Cookies - Most would-be dulce de leche ice creams merely taste like a sickly sweet caramel. This one tastes like the real thing. And no matter how much I ate in one sitting, it never was cloying. The churro-inspired cookie mix-in is okay, but honestly, even though it isn't dominant, this would have been better without it. The ice cream base is just that good.

Vanilla Chai - I will never turn away a cardamom ice cream and this one is no exception. That said, rare as they are, I've had other chai ice creams that pack more of a punch. Still, to see a good-not-amazing chai ice cream in the grocery store as a win.

Peanut Butter Caramel - The caramel in this is runny and excellent. The peanut butter base isn't stick-to-the-roof-of-your-mouth, which is a good thing. All in all a decent flavor; it's just peanut butter forward isn't my usual area of interest in desserts.

Aztec Chocolate - Chocolate ice cream rarely tastes like its namesake and is often disappointing because of it. This ice cream continues the long line of disappointing chocolate ice creams. Sure, the spice is there and it certainly is a dark brown (almost black) color, but chocolate it ain't.

Moroccan Honey Nut - This is one of the most interesting and original ice cream flavors I've eaten. Walking the border of savory and sweet, it makes use of a ras el hanout spice mixture. Try as I might, I could not tell you what all of the flavor notes here were. If it were just a hint more creamy and sweet, maybe I would have liked it.

Dr. Bombay's grocery store pints

The five flavors available at the Jewels.

With a leopard-print lid and a different multi-colored pinwheel art for each flavor, Dr. Bombay's ice cream pints stick out on the grocery store aisle. Apparently, this ice cream is a product of Snoop Dogg's imagination. I decided to buy one of each in the line to pass on the knowledge of what's worth trying and what you can skip. From best to worst:

S'more Vibes - Both sweet and creamy, this is easily the best of their ice cream bases. Wisely, they used dark chocolate fudge bites rather than mimicking a waxy, milk "chocolate" Hershey bar. Tasty graham swirl. I've no idea why they included crisped rice, but it isn't a bad addition.

Tropical Sherbet Swizzle - This is delicious. Tarter than your average sherbet and the pineapple swirl elevates this even further. Lost the top spot to S'more Vibes only by a hair.

Syrupy Waffle Sundaze - The ice cream base, which the packaging calls "waffle ice cream," is somewhere between brown sugar and maple. The waffle pieces are somewhere between a crisp Eggo and a waffle cone. A unique flavor.

Bonus Track Brownie - Not much flavor in the vanilla ice cream base. The "thick fudge swirl" is like what they use in Moose Tracks, like almost exactly. This flavor is pretty middle of the road.

Rollin' in the Dough - Not a good ice cream base. According to the packaging, it is "cookie ice cream." Tastes chemically, which is a shame since everything mixed in tastes good.

Churn in Phoenix, AZ

Some places do the classics so well, they don’t need to do anything else. Churn is one of them. And they know it. Just check out this humble selection:

You can’t lose, but here are my thoughts on what’s best: 

Strawberry: Quite simply, this is the best strawberry I’ve ever had that wasn’t made by my own hand. This is the MUST TRY. 

Butter Pecan: Many capture the butter, but this one also captures the pecan as a flavor, not just a mix-in. Quite possibly the best butter pecan I've ever had.

Honorable mention: Double Chocolate and Malted Milk Chocolate, which are distinctly different and both more chocolate-y than your average brown ice cream claiming to be chocolate.

This Phoenix scoop shop fantastic. I wish I had the words to sell it better. I dunno...This has not been my best post, but after over 15 years I have spots I wish I'd blogged about and didn't. This is the one I think of the most.

For the Instagram set, I'm also a fan of Churn's decor, which like the menu is simple but elevated.

Freezer Favs: Stewarts's Crumbs Along the Mohawk

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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Full disclosure: I have not eaten this flavor since the summer of 2005, the same summer I met and discussed ice cream with Marisa Tomei...and over two years before this blog was created. The seeds of this blog were actually a series of MySpace blog posts that summer all those years ago. While at a summer internship, I had chosen to detail my notable summer experiences in the Berkshires through the lens of the notable desserts I ate. It seems that even back then, my travels were defined by my sweet tooth.

Still, my memories are strong of Stewart's Crumbs Along the Mohawk, a graham cracker ice cream with graham cracker pieces and a caramel swirl.

Eating it was revelatory.

One usually uses of the label "acquired taste" for a flavor that challenges one's flavor sensibilities, something strong and usual. No one would ever describe a flavor as benign as graham crackers as an acquired taste. That said, it wasn't until I had Crumbs Along the Mohawk (named for the Mohawk Trail) that I awakened to the flavor of graham.

Certain flavors appeal to us more as we get older and that phenomenon is bolder than merely "acquiring" a taste. The sensation is more like learning you have a long-lost sibling who loves you very, very much.

Crumbs Along the Mohawk, I salute you!