Cream of the (Dessert) Crop

A week ago last Tuesday, Salt Lake City hosted its first ever drone show of “fireworks”, replacing the traditional explosives residents have come to expect over the downtown park. The drones create colorful shapes and animations in the sky – even giant words – as well as a pretty good impression of the blooms and starbursts of fireworks. But let’s be honest: drones don’t replace fireworks.  The same can be said for the frozen treats aiming to be more popular than, say, a simple serving of ice cream.

On the heels of Independence Day, America has another celebration coming up.  National Ice Cream Day is the third Sunday of July in our country (and July itself National Ice Cream Month!) The “holiday” was signed into public law in the mid-1980s when Congress apparently had nothing better to do.  So how do you and I “celebrate” ice cream?  No clue, other than a Google search to figure out where to get a free scoop.  And if you think ice cream is a poor excuse for a holiday, consider, the first Saturday in February is Ice Cream for Breakfast Day… which pretty much confirms every day of the year is some sort of “Day”.

A stroll past the freezers of ice cream in any grocery store boasts an impressive variety of spins, including cones, sandwiches, pies, and bites. Ice cream is split by bananas, cherry-topped into sundaes, blended into shakes, cloaked as “gelato”, and even fried into crispy-covered bites.  I ask you, who buys all this stuff?  Sure, as a kid I had a thing for Eskimo Pies (because my mom bought them) and later on I ate my share of Dove Bars (because my dad loved them).  But feet to the fire, I’d rather spend my pennies on the best version of plain ol’ ice cream.  I have my favorite brand (and you have yours) and time and again it ends up in my grocery cart instead of any of those other treats.

For a few years there I got caught up in the Cold Stone Creamery concept, where your serving of ice cream is placed on a marble slab and combined with “mix-in’s”.  It was (still is) a trendy take on ice cream.  But after just a few visits I realized the draw was the mix-in’s more than the ice cream.  Safe to say Cold Stone doesn’t use a brand of ice cream anyone would consider “gourmet”.  They know what brings people through the doors: marble slabs and mix-in’s.  Cold Stone’s rival is even named Marble Slab.

For anyone growing up on the West Coast in the 1970s, the one-on-every-corner ice cream parlor was Baskin-Robbins.  Their ever-changing selection of thirty-one flavors guaranteed slow perusing, even if the final choice was vanilla or rocky road nine times out of ten (okay, I’ll grant you peanut-butter-and-chocolate too).  Today, Baskin-Robbins is still going strong, but I think most people prefer the flavors of whatever local parlor is closest to their house.  And let it be said for the millionth time: Vanilla is and will always be the king of ice cream flavors.  Simple, delicious, and versatile.

“Dreyer’s”, in fact

As for the commercial brands in grocery store freezers, Dreyer’s “Grand Ice Cream” is trying very hard to make its offerings your favorite.  They smartly purchased www.icecream.com and dressed up the website as a tribute to ice cream, but let’s be real: they’re just pushing their own products here.  My favorite brand is still Haagen-Dazs but get this: Haagen-Dazs is now a subsidiary of Dreyer’s.  Whoa.  Give it a few more years and Dreyer’s may turn into the Amazon of ice cream.

If you like to spend big on ice cream like I do (Haagen-Dazs is not inexpensive!) you might consider Cellato, a brand from Japan.  Cellato makes particularly fragrant gelatos, mixing in white and black truffles from Italy, champagne, and caviar.  Their “white night” flavor is topped with an edible gold leaf, two exquisite cheeses, and a sake-like paste.  The price of a single serving?  $6,380 USD, making it the most expensive ice cream in the world.  Might as well make the airplane seat to Japan first-class for a dessert like that.

Cellato’s pricey “White Night”

In closing, a very happy National Ice Cream Day to you!  However you choose to celebrate this Sunday, you don’t need Cellato.  You don’t need Coldstone Creamery either.  For me, the entire ice cream aisle at the grocery store might as well be reduced to the Haagen-Dazs flavors.  Those, and the choices at my local ice cream parlor satisfy my craving.  In other words, forget about the drones.  Traditional fireworks will always be better.

Some content sourced from the CNN Travel article, “Don’t drop it: World’s most expensive ice cream costs $6,400”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

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Author: Dave

Five hundred posts would suggest I have something to say… This blog was born from a desire to elevate the English language, highlighting eloquent words from days gone by. The stories I share are snippets of life itself, and each comes with a bonus: a dusted-off word I hope you’ll go on to use more often. Read “Deutschland-ish Improvements” to learn about my backyard European wish list. Try “Slush Fun” for the throwback years of the 7-Eleven convenience store. Or drink in "Iced Coffee" to discover the plight of the rural French cafe. On the lighter side, read "Late Night Racquet Sports" for my adventures with our latest moth invasion. As Walt Whitman said, “That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.” Here then, my verse. Welcome to Life In A Word.

32 thoughts on “Cream of the (Dessert) Crop”

    1. Sherbet fascinates me because it’s always an option in an ice cream store. Without the dairy, you can claim its lighter and healthier, sometimes made with real fruit. If ice cream wasn’t an option, I might get hooked on sherbet myself.

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  3. I love ice cream, sadly, my stomach stopped liking ice cream so I don’t eat it any more, but I fondly remember my friends and I riding over to the local BR ice cream place on a summer day for a nice mint chocolate chip cone. Yum.

    and I vote no on fake fireworks.

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    1. B-R is nostalgic in my book as well, Andrew. I know they don’t have a trademark on Rocky Road but any version other than B-R’s doesn’t seem like the real deal.

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  4. Now that I’ve had gelato in Italy it’s hard to find something that compares. I’ve been ruined. I got Jon a Ninja Creami for his birthday so we’ve been making our own healthier ice cream, and while the flavors still need some tweaking, the consistency is pretty incredible for a kitchen appliance.

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    1. Frankly, that’s great to hear about Italian gelato, Lyssy. I haven’t been back to Italy long enough to wonder if the in-country version is as good as I remember. Gelato beats any ice cream in my book. I’m sure you have several options for it in NYC. I’m surprised – like the espresso craze – gelato hasn’t become more mainstream in America.

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  6. Wow, National Ice Cream day, I never knew that. Love the Drone show. This year the fireworks went from 8:40 – 10:40 for a couple of nights, it was too much and I like fireworks. I kept thinking how it could have been shorter and the saved money used in different ways.

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    1. Fireworks are sold year-round in the South. I’m too practical for any purchases though. Spend my hard-earned money on something that flames out in seconds? I prefer to just watch the big shows instead.

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  7. As a girl living in a small town in the midwest when Baskin-Robbins arrived, it was a big deal. I remember all those flavors, many seemed exotic to me. We had local ice cream dairies, but to be a town with a B-R was status.

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    1. As a boy living in a big town I took B-R for granted, but it was still a big deal when my parents took us. The nearest shop was on the way home from church and my dad was a big fan of Rocky Road. Score!

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  8. If you love ice cream, you must make the trek to Fredericksburg, Virginia, to Carl’s on Princess Anne Street. There is no access to the inside. Customers walk up to a window and order. Their only three flavors are chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. The ice cream is soft, but not the air-puffed soft-serve you find many places. It has high milk-fat content and is dense. It is soft because it is made fresh daily so has never been hard-frozen. As you stand in line, and you will stand in line, you can look through the plate-glass windows and see the fresh ice cream coming out of the glistening stainless-steel machines while the workers scoop the deliciousness into cups or cones. Sure, they have toppings to make sundaes, but the ice cream needs no accompaniment.

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    1. That is a ringing endorsement! I mapped Carl’s and it’d be a 7.5 hour drive, so I’ll have to be patient for the next time I’m in the area. Good thing I have my blog history as a reminder.

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  9. I didn’t know about the drone shows versus fireworks – very interesting. Thank you for sharing that Dave. I didn’t know ice cream had a month or a special day either.

    We have two frozen treats that are legendary in my area: one is Calder’s Dairy, established in 1946, where they truck the fresh milk in from their local farm to the dairy where it is made into ice cream. Their small store at the dairy sells every flavor of ice cream by the gallon, but the preferable way to enjoy a Calder’s ice cream cone is by waiting in a line that snakes out of the ordering area and down the street. It is well worth the wait.

    We also have Bob Jo’s Frozen Custard Stand, legendary for the tasty sugar cones, also piled very high and you can get your choice of doo-dads to put in it – I am also a purist and like my frozen custard plain thank you very much. Bob Jo’s is a tiny shack on a corner built in 1947 and last year celebrated its 75th anniversary.

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    1. I’m sure every reader has local favorites like yours, Linda (tho’ I think I’ve heard of Calder’s). Frozen custard didn’t arrive on the West Coast until after I moved on. The only options I ever recall were ice cream and sherbet. To be honest, my first frozen custard was from the (butter) burger franchise Culver’s, when they opened in Colorado. It’s good, but ice cream is still my go-to.

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      1. I’ve never been to Culvers before but just read another blogger’s post about visiting Culver’s for their “Frozen Custard Concrete Mixer”. I haven’t had sherbet in years – we always had raspberry in the Summer when I was growing up. My mom always had Breyer’s Vanilla Bean yogurt here “for medicinal purposes” … her remedy for occasional heartburn. 🙂

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  10. Southeast Michigan was experiencing turbulent weather Friday and I lost my power at 4:00 p.m. I have an instant-on, all house generator so lost internet momentarily, then five hours later as I went to push “Send” on this comment, my internet went out. Our power was restored at 2:00 a.m. – more severe weather today. I eagerly await Autumn – it’s been a stormy week with tornado watches – ugh.

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    1. Seems to be happening all over this time of year. A few houses in our neighborhood took direct lightning hits over the weekend. If we’re ever a target, a generator may be in our future.

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      1. I’m a Nervous Nellie about high winds and storms since that downed wire fire last December. I’ll be happy if the neighbor removes the dead tree, unlikely as it is $15,000.00 to take it down. The tree cutters were just here Thursday and cleared the burned tree and bushes away. When I saw how the chain-link fence was bent down from the downed electrical wire and the burn marks on the fence, it was cringworthy. I got the generator mostly for Winter as I have no family where I could stay if power was lost and I worried about the pipes – we lost power three days from an ice storm in February, thankfully after the generator was installed.

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  11. Oooooh, I see an excuse for some ice cream! I am a bit of an ice cream snob, and agree with you completely about Cold Stone. Really good ice cream must be dense and must not be “gummy” (that leaves a little peak when you pull out a scoop.)

    In the midwest I think the King of good ice cream is Graeter’s out of Cincinnati. Their mocha chip is fabulous.

    Lighted drones instead of fireworks – I’m not even going there.

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    1. Every locale surely has its favorite ice cream. Glad we agree on benchmarks for quality ice cream and quality fireworks. “Gummy” is a great word to describe awful ice cream. Awful ice cream also leaves a residue in your mouth, if not a noticeable aftertaste.

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  13. I enjoyed reading your article about cream of the dessert crop. You have shared a delicious and tempting list of your favorite desserts/ice creams and why you love them. I agree with you that desserts are a wonderful and essential part of life. I can relate to your sweet tooth and your appreciation for desserts/ice creams.

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  14. Now, that is a holiday I must celebrate!! Sorry, but vanilla is boring. I will still eat it, though.
    I am a far of Baskin-Robbins chocolate chip (nothing mint) and Häagen-Dazs coffee almond crunch.
    Happy holiday!! Blessings!

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    1. B-R chocolate chip – good choice! I ate my share of that flavor growing up. And I agree on vanilla, even if it tops the “favorites” list. I always top mine with chocolate syrup.

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