Saturday, June 1, 2013

A Limited Edition Flavor Worth Keeping Around: Haagen-Dazs Coconut Macaroon Ice Cream!


The Good: Tastes great, Great ingredients
The Bad: More expensive than other ice creams, Not terribly healthy! Not quite four servings?!
The Basics: Haagen-Dazs Coconut Macaroon Ice cream is a limited edition flavor that is worth hunting down while it remains available for anyone who loves coconut!


In trying out limited edition ice creams, there is always a danger of finding something truly wonderful that one ends up disappointed with in that it will no longer be around in the future. Most Limited Edition flavors of ice cream I have tried seem to be experimental flavors that the ice cream manufacturers hope to use to determine the market viability. As a result, many flavors are only available for a single season before disappearing forever. I mention that at the outset of my review of the Limited Edition Coconut Macaroon flavor of Haagen-Dazs ice cream because I suspect – given how I found it on clearance – that it is once of the flavors that will not make thee cut. That’s too bad because I’d hate to go through the rest of my existence teased by only a single 14 oz. container of Haagen-Dazs Coconut Macaroon Ice cream!

Unfortunately, for those hoping this limited edition flavor might endure in the standard line-up, this flavor seems to not have caught on, at least locally. That is unfortunate because it was so flavorful that it deserves to be part of the regular line-up from the premium ice cream maker!

Basics

Haagen-Dazs Ice cream comes in a 14 oz. (almost) pint container. The Coconut Macaroon Ice cream is a smooth ice cream with chunks of coconut macaroon cookies. Coconut Macaroon is mostly smooth with chunks in every three to four bites. This ice cream is basically one sweet homogenous flavor with dry bits throughout.

At (locally) $5.99 a pint, the Haagen-Dazs Ice cream is an expensive frozen dairy dessert. That I found it on clearance for $2.99 was the primary reason I bought the pint of ice cream, though I do like coconut and coconut flavored ice creams.

Ease Of Preparation

The Coconut Macaroon Ice Cream is a simple ice cream with only one additive. As an ice cream, preparation is ridiculously simple: one need only open the top of the container, remove the safety seal from the top, scoop out a half cup and consume! There is no trick to preparing or eating the Coconut Macaroon Ice Cream!

Taste

Haagen-Dazs Coconut Macaroon ice cream smells richly of vanilla and coconut. As it warms, this becomes one of the most aromatic ice creams I have yet tried.

On the taste front, the Coconut Macaroon Ice cream is very creamy and tastes exceptionally sweet, like frozen vanilla icing. The actual macaroons present the bulk of the flavor of the coconut, though the sweet ice cream does bear the flavor of coconut, albeit subtly. Virtually every bite possesses coconut macaroon pieces, so this ice cream remains very flavored with the full flavor of coconut macaroons. This is a very true-to-life flavor, like having a coconut macaroon drenched in cold milk!

This Ice cream has a slight dry aftertaste to it. The aftertaste lasts for about ten minutes.

Nutrition

The Haagen-Dazs Coconut Macaroon Ice cream is a comparatively thick ice cream with a firm, obvious additive. The 14 oz. container represents three and a half half-cup servings. In the half-cup serving, there are 290 calories, 170 of which are from fat. The nineteen grams of fat represent 29% of the RDA of fat, with 60% of one’s RDA of saturated fat coming in the 12 grams of saturated fat in this ice cream. One serving has 75 mg of cholesterol (that’s 25% of the RDA!) and 60 mg of Sodium (2% RDA). The only other real nutrients are three grams of protein, 6% of the RDA of Calcium in the Coconut Macaroon Ice cream.

Haagen-Dazs has decent ingredients. Made primarily of Cream, skim milk and egg yolks, Coconut Macaroon Ice cream is all natural! There is nothing unpronounceable in the ingredients list. The Coconut Macaroon Haagen-Dazs is Kosher, but not marked as gluten free. There are no allergy warnings on the package. It does, however, contain milk and egg ingredients, so it is very much not Vegan compliant.

Storage/Clean-Up

Haagen-Dazs Ice cream is both a frozen and a dairy product, so it is pretty obvious that it must be kept frozen in order to remain viable. Kept frozen it remains fresh for months (my pint had an expiration date of April 26, 2013).

The Coconut Macaroon Ice cream is an entirely white ice cream and it will stain if it melts on dark clothing (and an opaque white dairy stain is more than just a fashion nightmare!). On nonporous surfaces, the Ice cream wipes off exceptionally easily.

Overall

The Haagen-Dazs Coconut Macaroon Ice cream is an impressive dessert, but the biggest detraction to enthusiastically recommending it is that it probably won’t be on the market by the time you read this review!

For other frozen desserts, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Graeter’s Coconut Chocolate Chip Ice cream
Breyers Blasts Banana Split Ice Cream
Edy’s Peppermint Limited Edition Ice Cream

8/10

For other food reviews, please visit my Food Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

No comments:

Post a Comment