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January 2009

Product Reviews / Main Nibbles / Ice Cream

New Zealand Natural Ice Cream

Page 2: Ice Cream Flavors

This is Page 2 of a two-page review. Click on the black link below to visit Page 1.

• Page 1: Overview
• Page 2: The Flavors
• Page 2: Shopping Information

Flavors Of New Zealand Natural Ice Cream

The other curiosity is that New Zealand Natural calls itself “flavored ice cream.” What other other kind of ice cream is there, you may ask; even vanilla is flavored. In some countries—our travels through Spanish lands come to mind—there is a flavor called nata, or cream. It’s frozen, sweetened cream, no other flavor added, and as a child in Spain we delighted in it.

In the U.S., there’s a standard repertoire with seasonal flavors. The basic line includes:

• Chocolate Ecstasy. While “ecstasy” is a bit hyperbolic, this is a nice chocolate ice cream with a chocolate ripple. There’s good cocoa intensity and satisfaction without excessiveness—in fact, we’d change the name to Chocolate Satisfaction.
• Cookies & Cream. This is one of our favorite flavors in general; we try it everywhere we see it. Here, it is the disappointment of the lot; both the ice cream and the cookies were undersweetened to the point that the product didn’t have a whole lot of flavor. Just as you might want to salt some foods, we wanted to sprinkle some sugar on this one.
• Forest Berry Frozen Yoghurt. Not tasted; 97% fat free.
• Hokey Pokey. This flavor contains small dots of butterscotch. The package calls them “crunchy” and they may have been so when they were mixed in. But by the time we opened the pint, they had dissolved into little pockets of gooey butterscotch. We’re not complaining: They form a self-contained butterscotch sundae. The ice cream surrounding the pockets purports to be butterscotch-flavored, but seems to be the vanilla with a faint tinge of butterscotch. Overall, it’s a delightful flavor for those who want a sweet, gooey treat.
  
  Hokey Pokey has hidden pockets of liquid butterscotch in a vanilla ice cream base. Product photography by Daniela Cuevas | THE NIBBLE.
  
• Mango Sorbet. This 99% fat-free sorbet has a beautiful, creamy consistency, a sleight-of-hand that is a result of added soy protein and corn syrup. More sorbet makers should try this, just for the ease of getting the spoon through the sorbet. But we’ve had more exciting mango flavor. This one was O.K., just not celestial. As taste is in the palate of the beholder, if mango sorbet is your thing, try it: You may prefer it to the brand you’re enjoying now.
• Mint Chocolate Kisses. Alas, as mint chocolate is one of our favorite flavors, we didn’t find this one.
• Toffee Caramel Cup. Not tasted.
• Vanilla Classic. Classic and classy: You know you’re eating a premium ice cream because of the density, yet nothing is overblown. You don’t taste high butterfat content (from a high proportion of cream, like Häagen-Dazs), you don’t taste egginess even though this is a custard base, and, blessedly, you don’t taste the vanilla extract, which is a flaw in many vanilla ice creams. This vanilla is so restrained that we at first didn’t know what to make of it. Then we ate the whole pint.

Coming To A Scoop Shop Near You

Sooner or later, a New Zealand Natural Ice Cream shop may open near you. Of course, you’ll want to try it. Our take on this line is:

• We like that an ice cream is made with less sugar, although in our sugar-overdosed society, it will be an adjustment for many people.
• If you find that many of the superpremium ice cream products are too rich or sweet for you, but you like the density of a superpremium, you’ll really like this line. While we like Breyer’s, a standard “premium” line, for example, it has so much overrun (air whipped in) that it’s not satisfying to us like the dense, superpremium brands. Worse, the spoon glides through that air-whipped ice cream so quickly, it’s too easy to polish off an entire pint in one sitting.

We welcome New Zealand Natural to the United States, and wish them well.