What I'm eating - Haagen Daz Feature Flavor, Sticky Toffee Pudding

Ever watch that Food Network special about the 2006 Scoop flavor search? The winning flavor would become the next, new Haagen Daz flavor. Finalists included cannoli, toasted coconut sesame brittle and sticky toffee pudding. Sticky toffee pudding won. It became a feature flavor. Hmmm...sounded interesting...and I can't resist something new... Just had to wait until the right opportunity. This week there was a sale at a local market on Haagen Daz pints and I went to see if sticky toffee pudding was there. It sure was...

So, what is sticky toffee pudding anyway? According to the wikipedia, "Sticky toffee pudding is a British dessert (or pudding) consisting of a moist sponge cake made with fine chopped dates and covered in a toffee sauce. It was originally called icky sticky toffee sponge." Sounds like my kind of dessert. A search on Google turns up a lot of companies that produce it so it must be popular...even outside of the UK. Interested in more details about the ingredients and how you make it? Just out of curiousity, I took a look at one recipe and another. The description on the ice cream container says, "rich vanilla ice cream swirled with sticky toffee sauce and morsels of moist brown sugar cake". Mmmm...sounds really good...but is it?

OK, we know what's in it and how they make the cake part...so, how does it taste? Let's take out the container and open that top wrapper. Wait, wait... Like a fine wine, good ice cream needs to be enjoyed, not just devoured. Appearance...basically creamy white with swirls of brown and you can see those chunky bits of cake. Aroma...I can detect a light hint of toffee. Ok, let's dig in that spoon... Mmmm...I can taste the vanilla ice cream at first, sweet and creamy. Followed by the sweet caramel of the toffee and then I bite into a chunk of cake and it hits me. Wow, what a combination! And I can really taste the dates in that cake. I know some people don't like dates but I do. I've read comments on this flavor and either you like it or you don't. The combination here can be a bit on the sweet side for some people but it works for me. This is going to be a pint that I savor a spoonful at a time. I recommend that you try it if you haven't...after all, you'll never know if you like it unless you try it... *Recommendation-try to get it on sale.





By the way, Haagen Daz has selected the top 3 flavor finalists for this year's Scoop. The finalists are Blueberry Belgian Waffle, Coco Y Cacao and Caramelized Pear and Toasted Pecan. You can view and vote on your favorite here.