The honey in Hawaiian Lehua Honey & Sweet Cream Ice Cream is made from the nectar of the blossoms of the Ohi’a tree. How rare is it? It is found only on the north slope of the Manua Kea volcano on the Big island of Hawaii, and harvested just once a year. WHAT IT IS: Häagen-Dazs Reserve, a new line of reserve ice creams from Häagen-Dazs. WHY IT’S DIFFERENT: Unusual ingredients and great recipes. WHY WE LOVE IT: Häagen-Dazs has always been a superpremium big supermarket brand, but these ice creams have a finesse that equals anything made by a small, artisan creamery. WHERE TO BUY IT: At www.haagendazs.com/reserve, plus specialty food stores and select supermarkets in California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Washington and Washington DC. Häagen-Dazs Reserve Series sells at a premium price of $4.99 per pint, compared to $3.79 Suggested Retail Price for regular prints.

Häagen-Dazs Reserve: RSVP! Lovers of artisan ice cream now have five new flavors to contemplate from superpremium industry leader Häagen-Dazs But they’re not just any new flavors: They’re made of relatively rare ingredients, are made in limited quantity and are in limited distribution at select supermarkets and specialty food stores. Yes, the original superpremium ice cream brand has returned to its roots. Chocolate ice cream fans can taste an earthy and unusual Amazon Valley Chocolate Ice Cream. Those who have been hearing a lot about açaí can experience Brazilian Açaí Berry Sorbet. For lovers of honey there’s a pretty special Hawaiian Lehua Honey & Sweet Cream Ice Cream, our group’s favorite in this tasting. For people who can’t get enough pom, there are Pomegranate Chip Ice Cream in pints and chocolate-covered Pomegranate Bars on a stick. And those who just want another ebullient flavor to eat from the pint—because you can’t put the container down—there’s Toasted Coconut Sesame Brittle Ice Cream. Those who have always liked Häagen-Dazs will find more to love here. Those who have moved on to small-batch boutique creameries will find that H-D has stepped up to compete. Here, “Reserve” isn’t a marketing gimmick: It’s unreservedly true. Read the full review below to learn more about this new line, and each of the flavors. Click here to read the full review below. (If your e-mail client does not support anchor links, scroll down.) Read reviews of more of our favorite ice creams in THE NIBBLE™ online magazine. See the Table of Contents of the April issue of THE NIBBLE online magazine, plus the back issues archive and our most popular articles.

Make Your Own Ice Cream

Williams-Sonoma Collection: Ice Cream, by Mary Goodbody. More than 40 easy-to-follow recipes, from all-time favorites (lemon sorbet) to delicious new flavors (chocolate hazelnut gelato). The goal of this book is to inspire you to make your own ice cream—and we’ve recommended some of our favorite ice cream makers below, too. Click here for more information.	The Ultimate Ice Cream Book: Over 500 Ice Creams, Sorbets, Granitas, Drinks, And More, by Bruce Weinstein. Recipes for just about every ice cream imaginable, from four different versions of vanilla to corn, avocado, and oatmeal. There’s a different recipe to keep ice cream lovers busy for a year and a half, including one for homemade ice cream cones. Click here for more information.	Gelato!, by Pamela Sheldon Johns. Johns, an expert in the foods of Italy, clearly loves her subjects. With spectacular recipes handed down from generations, and fascinating stories from Italian gelato artisans—plus gorgeous photography—this is a volume for any ice cream-lover’s collection. Click here for more information.

Häagen-Dazs® Reserve™ Ice Creams: RSVP!

You scream, I scream, all of America screams and eats millions of gallons of ice cream a year—most of it vanilla, chocolate, butter pecan, French vanilla, neapolitan, vanilla Bean, mint chocolate chip, strawberry and cookies n’ cream purchased in supermarkets. Just 14% is superpremium ice cream*—the top-of-the-line, a category which is government-regulated based on the amount of butterfat (which makes it rich and creamy, 14% or more for superpremium) and the amount of overrun, or air whipped in (10% to 40% for superpremium—the less overrun, the denser the product). Butterfat and overrun percentages largely differentiate superpremium ice cream from premium, regular and economy grades—but so do flavors. Economy and regular brands tend to come in basic flavors—vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, coffee. Premium and superpremium brands make fancier flavors as well: Fudge Swirl, Chocolate Chip Mint, Cookies & Cream. (Read more about the different grades of ice cream).
*Flavors and percent of sales reflect the last 52 weeks of supermarket sales. Yes, vanilla is Häagen-Daz’s top-seller, among approximately 65 flavors.

What  could be better than superpremium? While the government doesn’t recognize an “ultrapremium” category, some manufacturers are going for the “U” by using rare and costlier ingredients—the reserve line, as it were. One such company, Choctál, recently debuted a line of “ultrapremium” single origin chocolate and vanilla ice creams, making variations that use only cacao beans from Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ghana or Kalimantan (Borneo); or vanilla beans from Costa Rica, Madagascar, Mexico or Papua New Guinea.

Flavors & Serving Suggestions

For its debut flavors, the Häagen-Dazs Reserve series presents ice creams with ingredients sourced from around the globe†: the Far East, Middle East, South America and South Pacific. It also rides three hot food trends: açaí, pomegranate and single origin chocolate. While they are made on Häagen-Dazs’s signature French-style ice cream—i.e., it is made with a custard base that includes egg yolks, which make the ice cream more rich-tasting—the Häagen-Dazs Reserve recipes are less sweet and more complex than the regular line. Egg yolks are not a differentiator in superpremium ice cream: The butterfat comes from the amount of cream in the recipe. If you’d like a less rich-tasting superpremium ice cream, look for one without egg yolks (most of the boutique brands we’ve sampled don’t use them).

†Of course, everyday chocolate, coffee, vanilla, banana, coconut, and other flavors are made with ingredients from foreign shores.

If you’re ready to taste, grab your virtual spoon and dig in—in alphabetical order:

We had just finished our review of Choctál’s four single origin chocolate ice creams, which we had tasted along with several other superpremium ice creams from blended beans‡ as a benchmark, so the difference was especially eye-opening. Should you decide to have an origin chocolate ice cream tasting (and we highly recommend it), you will definitely want to include Amazon Valley Chocolate.

Serving Suggestion: Garnish with fresh raspberries or a raspberry balsamic reduction. For a wine pairing, try a dessert red: a late harvest Zinfandel or a Banyuls from France.

‡Single origin” means that all of the beans come from the same region, and therefore share a flavor profile common to that region. Most chocolate products are made from blended beans, combining beans from up to 20 different regions of the world to achieve the exact flavor the manufacturer is looking for. In addition, every harvest invariably produces varying flavors due to weather and other factors, so blending allows a uniform flavor to be achieved. Read more about the geographical differences in cacao beans and chocolate flavors.

Serving Suggestions: The sorbet is delicious plain, or served with seasonal berries or a fresh fruit salad of berries and tropical fruits (banana, mango, papaya, passionfruit—not citrus). It also be delicious with a scoop of vanilla—an açaí creamsicle. It also can be enjoyed with blue cheese like Gorgonzola, served with whole wheat biscuits like Carr’s Whole Wheat Crackers or English wheatmeal biscuits.

Serving Suggestions: Versatile, this milk-and-honey marvel can be served anytime: as a casual or fancy dessert, a snack, even for brunch on a waffle. It’s best to enjoy the pure flavors of this ice cream without any additions, except for a plain piece of pound cake. (Sure, put a macadamia nut or two on top as a garnish.) For a sybaritic finish to dinner, serve with a glass of Sauternes.

There are lots of large, “chocolaty” chips, made with coconut oil, not cocoa butter, so they can’t be called “chocolate”**, a switch that was made after the company received many complaints about how hard and cold the chocolate chip was in ice cream. Although they are not “real” chocolate, they provide a nice bittersweet flavor. The net impression is a mouthful of chocolate chips on a low-key fruit ice cream in the background. A mouthful of chocolate is never unpleasant; the ice cream pleases in its own quiet way (the more we ate it—and we did finish the pint—the more complacent we became).

**In order to be called chocolate, a product must include cocoa butter. Products made with vegetable oil substitutions (which are far less expensive than cocoa butter) are called coatings or confectioner’s coatings.

The coating on the Dark Pomegranate Bar is much sweeter than the chips. It seems to be the same chocolaty coating as on the company’s regular ice cream bars (made with soybean oil rather than coconut oil). Häagen-Dazs’s frozen bars in general have many fans, but the coating is a bit too sweet for us: The sweet chocolaty flavor takes over, playing front man to the pomegranate ice cream in the background. In choosing between the two, we favor the Pomegranate Chip Ice Cream.

Or better yet, you might want to try the products from Sheer Bliss, the company that brought the first specialty brand pomegranate ice cream onto the market two years ago. They have a very well done Pomegranate With Dark Chocolate Chips ice cream and a Pomegranate Bar covered with semisweet chocolate (both are made with 100% pomegranate juice and 100% real chocolate).

Serving Suggestion: This flavor is delicious with a plain, dense chocolate cake—a Bundt® or a chocolate pound cake. For a wine pairing, pour a late harvest Zinfandel.

Serving Suggestion: Showy enough by itself, Toasted Coconut Sesame Brittle Ice Cream can be served for dessert after a Chinese, Thai or Vietnamese dinner. Atop a piece of regular or chocolate pound cake, it is the bomb. Add a sweet German dessert wine such as a Trokenbeerenauslese and celebrate something.

Recommendations

• For an all-around great ice cream: Lehua Honey and Sweet Cream Ice Cream.
• For sweet, rich excitement: Toasted Coconut Sesame Brittle Ice Cream.
• For an exotic experience: Amazon Valley Chocolate Ice Cream.

Mankind has been enjoying ice cream for thousands of years: Up to four thousand years ago, the Chinese elite enjoyed a frozen treat made with milk, overcooked rice and spices that was packed in snow to harden. Fruit ices were prepared with fruit juices, honey and aromatic spices and similarly frozen. Through trade routes, the Chinese introduced frozen desserts to the Persians and other Arabs 2,500 years ago (fruit ice is “sharbet” in Arabic). The elite of antiquity like Alexander the Great were hooked on fruit  juices sweetened with honey and chilled with snow; Emperor Nero’s famous banquets always included them. If his crew could have gotten their hands on a supply of Häagen-Dazs Reserve Hawaiian Lehua Honey & Sweet Cream Ice Cream, they would have partied even harder.

—Karen Hochman

FORWARD THIS NIBBLE to anyone who loves exciting flavors of ice cream.

HÄAGEN-DAZS® RESERVE™ ICE CREAMS Amazon Valley Chocolate Ice Cream, Brazilian Açaí Berry Sorbet, Hawaiian Lehua Honey and Sweet Cream Ice Cream, Pomegranate Chip Ice Cream, Pomegranate Dark Chocolate Bar, Toasted Coconut Sesame Brittle Ice Cream Certified Kosher (Dairy) by OU Pints $4.99 Purchase at select supermarkets and specialty food stores and shortly will be available for sale online at haagendazs.com/reserve. For more information visit Haagen-Dazs.com. Back to Index

One of the must-try Häagen-Dazs Reserve flavors.

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