Tag: Baskin-Robbins

Move your cursor away from the search box on Amazon.com. Stop trying to scroll through the listings of international breakfast foods. Do yourself a favor and cancel your vacation plans to South Korea.

Oreo O’s are dead.

The cereal does not exist anymore. Not here in the States, not in Seoul, not even in freaking Pyongyang. Why else do you think Kim Jong-un is shooting missiles into the ocean?

The magical elixir of milk that blends the sweet chocolaty taste of cookies and the crunchy wholesomeness of breakfast cereal is but a distant memory. In its place we have a few attempts at compromise, but who are we kidding? The stale abomination known as Cookie Crisp will never suffice, nor will a new limited edition Oreo creme which tastes like sixteen bowls of Fruity Pebbles.

But perhaps we have been looking in the wrong places. Instead of trying to find the soul of Oreo O’s in cereal or even cookies, perhaps the flavor explosion of sweet milk, chocolate, and corn cereal can be resurrected in ice cream form?

As our 1990s selves would have said: Well, DUH!

I have eaten a lot of off-the-wall Baskin-Robbins ice cream flavors in my day, but the new Oreo Milk ‘n Cereal flavor is my favorite, mostly because it captures the Oreo and cereal vibe that only my beloved Oreo O’s had been able to do. But if I thought the combination of Oreo chocolate wafers embedded into a crunchy corn cereal base was good, then Oreo Milk ‘n Cereal ice cream borrows a line from Tony the Tiger and is Gr-r-reat!

The cereal milk flavored ice cream basically tastes like a sweeter, richer, and thicker version of a really good cookies and cream ice cream; one studded with so many crunchy Oreo pieces you’d have thought an entire package of Oreos went into a single scoop. This isn’t some store-brand cookies and cream. Big chunks of rounded, ridged edged Oreo wafers are packed with a bittersweet chocolate flavor that contrasts the sweet ice cream base and the slightly salty, chewy frosted flakes ribbon.

What’s this, you say? The description reads frosted corn flake cereal pieces and a crunchy frosted corn flake cereal ribbon. Well that it does, but the description is as big a fib as telling you that you can still buy a box of Oreo O’s on Amazon.

Truth be told, I licked every nook and cranny of this cone, and the corn flake ribbon and frosted flake pieces are one and the same. The pieces have an odd texture that’s somewhere between the discontinued Frosted Flakes Gold, a northern style corn bread, and, I swear I’m not making this up, Corn Nuts. If that wasn’t complicated enough, there’s also notes of waffle cone and Cap’n Crunch, although I suspect the latter is due to toasting the clustered ribbon in coconut oil.

Long list of ingredients aside, It’s like having a corn cakes breakfast-flavored cereal, and it’s beyond delicious (note to Kellogg’s: Get on that).

I was actually a little skeptical that Oreo cookies and corn/frosted flakes would work together, but the result is a surprisingly harmonious ménage à trois, hearkening back to Oreo O’s while introducing another layer of crunchy corn sweetness and sweet creamy flavor. So do yourself a favor and wipe those tears from your keyboard, because you’ll soon be dripping melting ice cream (and tears of joy) all over the space bar.

(Nutrition Facts – 2.5 ounce scoop (small) – 200 calories, 180 calories from fat, 12 grams of fat, 6 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 25 milligrams of cholesterol, 110 milligrams of sodium, 22 grams of carbohydrates, 0 gram of dietary fiber, 16 gram of sugar, and 3 grams of protein..)

Purchased Price: $2.79
Size: Small Scoop
Purchased at: Baskin-Robbins
Rating: 9 out of 10
Pros: Tastes like a combination of Oreo O’s, Frosted Flakes, pancakes, and Cap’n Crunch all in one lick. Sweet and rich cookies and cream vibe from the cereal milk base. Excellent contrast of crunchy and creamy.
Cons: Cereal element isn’t exactly as advertised and isn’t crispy in the way cereal is. Crying over spilled (cereal) milk.

Since the dawn of civilization cheesecake and pie have been wrestling in a titanic struggle of after-dinner supremacy. No flavor or ingredient has been off limits. From plump summer blueberries to decadent combinations of chocolate and peanut butter, the two desserts have been firing salvos at each other for years

Thanks to an urban chic food trend in embracing American comfort food, pie seems to have delivered most of the damage (calorically, of course) in recent years. It’s even become part of our lexicon, practically becoming synonymous with all things Americana and just damn yummy. That’s not to say cheesecake hasn’t had some good showings, but with fall dawning on us and Dairy Queen doing double-duty with seasonally themed Pumpkin Pie and Apple Pie Blizzards, it’s going to take more than a proverbial trip to The Cheesecake Factory to steal some of the glory.

Fortunately, Baskin-Robbins is fighting back, indulging my love for both pumpkin and cheesecake with September’s Flavor of the Month. With both a cream cheese ribbon and cheesecake ice cream base it covers almost enough dairy as a Wisconsin 4-H fair, adding gingersnap cookie pieces which promise to add a bit of crunch and crust to the pumpkin ice cream.

That’s right, pumpkin. Not “pumpkin flavored,” and not just orange color with some vague spice flavor, the ice cream base nails an authentic pumpkin taste buttressed by a wonderfully autumnal sweetness and cinnamon spice. Bordering on cloying but thankfully neither earthly nor artificial, its distinct brown sugar notes are balanced by the taste of fresh cream and milk. It’s that taste which keeps the base from the heavy connotation pumpkin pie sometimes conjures up, and despite what I’m sure is a veritable calorie overload thanks to no less than 11 different sweeteners in the recipe, a modest-sized cone isn’t enough to make you want to unbuckle your pants and watch Tony Romo throw six interceptions on Thanksgiving.

The cheesecake flavor is really quite splendid, and I mean this in the most endearing way possible. Despite a fascistic ONE SCOOP FOR YOU policy instituted by my local Baskin-Robbins, a thorough probing (also known as licking) of the base reveals a well-integrated cream cheese ribbon with varying degrees of tang and richness.

There’s a smooth mouthfeel throughout, and no sign of the chalky or gritty “cheesecake” chunks that one sometimes finds in frozen yogurt shops. On two separate swipes on the tongue I caught a burst of tang, which illuminated my palette amidst the sweet cream high. It encompasses both a distinctive cheesecake vibe and indulgent cream cheese texture, and together the two elements of cultured dairy work magnificently.

Insofar as flavor is concerned, the gingersnap pieces aren’t bad—the distinct taste of ginger adds a great balancing depth to the sweetness of the ice cream—but the crushed snaps aren’t exactly crust worthy. With a soggy texture and almost no crunch to speak of, they’re actually kind of lost amidst the overly viscous ice cream, which seems especially prone to melting on even a modestly warm fall day.

Actually, my biggest gripe was the deteriorating texture of the ice cream. While it starts off exceptionally creamy and smooth, it doesn’t hold up to the tongue and quickly melts, leaving one with less with the impression of pumpkin ice cream and more with the notion of chilled pumpkin bisque. It’s enough to make me kind of wish I was getting pie.

Is Baskin-Robbins’ Pumpkin Cheesecake Ice Cream enough to deal a game-changing victory in the war between pie and cheesecake? Not quite, but that doesn’t make it any less delicious or seasonally appropriate. With a no-nonsense pumpkin flavor and distinctive cheesecake richness and tang, it definitely fires the first shots in this year’s fall flavor battle.

(Nutrition Facts – 4 oz scoop – 260 calories, 110 calories from fat, 12 grams of fat, 7 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 45 milligrams of sodium, 135 milligrams of cholesterol, 34 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of dietary fiber, 27 grams of sugars, and 4 grams of protein.)

Item: Baskin-Robbins Pumpkin Cheesecake Ice Cream
Purchased Price: $3.39
Size: Regular Scoop
Purchased at: Baskin-Robbins
Rating: 7 out of 10
Pros: Pumpkin cream cheese base has loads of cinnamon and brown sugar flavor. Avoids gritty fake cheesecake pieces. Gingersnap crumbs contribute good spice. Nice bursts of cheesecake tang. A solid showing by team cheesecake in the never-ending battle of desserts. Thank God I’m not a Cowboys fan.
Cons: Gingersnap pieces aren’t very crunchy and get lost amidst the ice cream base. Melts entirely too quickly. Feeling like Oliver Twist as the Baskin-Robbins employee haphazardly scoops my ice cream.

Lights! Camera! Popcorn! Ice Cream?

Wait a second there, Spielberg. I get that with the Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild, and Critics’ Choice awards packed into a two week span, January has become the de facto tie-in month for food branding to take a stroll down the red carpet. But you do realize, don’t you, that it’s January. As in, we just had a freaking polar vortex January. You’ve got to have something unique and unbelievably tasty to get me to put frozen stuff into my already frozen body in January.

Well, at the risk of also making January the de facto month for predictable food blogging puns, this year’s award for the best new ice cream flavor undoubtedly goes to Baskin-Robbins’ Movie Theater Popcorn Ice Cream.

I’ve got to give Baskin-Robbins credit. They do this whole “Flavor of the Month” and it’s usually something we’ve seen before – another Marvel comic book movie, if you will. A little chocolate here, some crushed up cookies there; sometimes, when they really go out on a limb, they might even add some fruit or fudge (edgy, I know.)

There’s nothing wrong with these flavors, but then again they’re hardly game-changing. Spider Man saves the world again but loses MJ? Bah! Seen it. Throw in the fact that my local Baskin-Robbins employees seem to take it as a personal insult when asked to walk the three steps from their station on the Dunkin’ Donuts side of the store to scoop ice cream on the Baskin-Robbins side, and it takes a lot for me to really get excited about their Flavor of the Month.

This month has been different. Between my unbound love of all things salty and sweet and my own experiments making kettle corn ice cream at home, I was cautiously optimistic that the film-inspired flavor would deliver just the right balance of sweet, salty, crunchy, and creamy – the fantastic four of texture and flavor, if you will.

The off-beat flavor not only delivered that elusive combination, it embodied it almost as well as Tom Hanks captured Richard Phillips in Captain Phillips. It all starts with the popcorn pieces, which, interestingly enough, are made from rice. Weird, right? Well, they don’t exactly look like perfectly popped and fluffy pieces of popcorn (actually, they have a stained gold color that familiar to those who drown their popcorn at the theater’s butter dispensers), but they sure have that buttery corn taste.

For you popcorn aficionados, consider these almost like little glazed nuggets of kettle corn, except with more butter. And more butter is always better, even in the case of ice cream. It’s almost toffee-like in its effect, providing a sweet crunch that stays remarkably brittle even in the extra creamy ice cream.

What’s more, there were no signs of ice crystals or other textural defects that sometimes come with larger mix-ins. About the size of a penny, the already salty-sweet popcorn flavored crisps get an extra shot of salty-sweet from the salted caramel swirl, which also adds an element of smooth dulce de leche-like viscosity to the ice cream. The whole flavor profile, with a depth of sweetness and hint of browned butter and salt, even elevates the lowly cake cone. Like a nominee for best supporting actress or actor, the cone actually takes on an element of – and I realize this sounds weird – pound cake flavor when eaten with the creamy, buttery ice cream base.

Granted, I like ice cream. But it takes a lot to get me to really, really, really like ice cream in January. But, as Brooklyn Nine-Nine pulled out a stunning surprise as the best new comedy at the Golden Globes (hilarious show, by the way), so Baskin Robbins’ Movie Theater Popcorn ice cream steals the show amidst over some otherwise worthy ice cream flavors. I just hope they bring it back in, shall we say, more conducive months for ice cream eating.

(Nutrition Facts – 2.5 oz scoop – 170 calories, 80 calories from fat, 9 grams of fat, 6 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 95 milligrams of sodium, 30 milligrams of cholesterol, 19 grams of carbohydrates, 0 gram of dietary fiber, 15 grams of sugars, and 3 grams of protein.)

Item: Baskin-Robbins Movie Theater Popcorn Ice Cream
Purchased Price: $1.99
Size: 2.5 oz Kid’s Scoop
Purchased at: Baskin-Robbins
Rating: 9 out of 10
Pros: Crunchy, buttery, salty-sweet popcorn pieces have a toffee-like effect. Plentiful salted caramel swirl. Creamy, clean mouthfeel. Raising the mere cake cone to the herculean dessert height of pound cake.
Cons: Eating ice cream in January. Predictable film puns. Awesome source of saturated fat.