Serious Eats
What's Your Take on Cake Ice Cream?
In celebration of its 30th birthday a few weeks ago Ben & Jerry's released Cake Batter ice cream. The flavor, which is a mixture of vanilla ice cream, yellow cake batter, and chocolate frosting, joins the ranks of more than 200 others the company has produced over the past three decades. From the simple (Strawberry, Butter Pecan, Chocolate Fudge Brownie) to the sensational (Bananas on the Rum, Pumpkin Cheesecake, Coconut Seven Layer Bar), there's no denying that Ben & Jerry's makes some great scoops. But I must admit, while I love ice cream, cake, and ice cream cake, I'm not a fan of cake ice cream.
Are you?
Once relegated to specialty shops like Cold Stone Creamery and Maggie Moo's, lately cake batter ice cream has been popping up everywhere from supermarket freezer sections to soft serve shacks like Smoochie's and Tasti D-Lite, the later of which has gone far beyond plain yellow to include Carrot, Red Velvet, German Chocolate, and even Angel Food Cake flavors.
I think my dislike of cake batter ice cream stems from its inherently artificial nature: not only is it ice cream flavored like cake, it is ice cream flavored like fake cake; something you might get out of a box as opposed to actually baking yourself. An ice cream cake is not a cake meant to taste like ice cream; it is a marriage of the two ingredients. Why shouldn't it work the same way the other way around? Ice cream with chunks of real cake in it sounds pretty delicious to me.
But perhaps I'm being a food snobbish grouch. There's a reason that these days the flavor is as common as Cookie Dough: people adore it. I'm curious to know how Serious Eaters feel: when it comes to cake ice cream, do you love it or leave it?