Self-Serve Frozen Yogurt Bars

Lisa, who I mentioned in yesterday's post, reminded me of something I have been meaning to bring up: self-serve frozen yogurt bars (I think that's what they are called...)

Please note (especially you, Ashu) these are very different than tart frozen yogurt places like Pinkberry I have blogged about before. These bars are: Self-serve. Tart or Creamy. Tons of toppings.

When I was visiting my inlaws in Prescott, Arizona, they took Husband and I to my first self-serve frozen yogurt bar: Frozen Yogartz. While I had never heard of them before, Lisa says there are a bunch of them in Boulder, Colorado as well.

 Photo by uhhhlaine.
Used under the Creative Commons License.

It's a fun concept. You choose a flavor of frozen yogurt and pump as much of it as you want into your container. At Frozen Yogartz, there were about ten flavors to choose from, some of them permanent, some of them rotating. Then you go to the toppings bar and top, top, top. They charge you by weight, so you just have to be sure your eyes aren't bigger than your stomach, because you are paying for it!

I "yelped" frozen yogurt bars in the Boston area and found at least one. Truthfully, I am surprised ice cream sundae bars never appeared before this. I love "make your own sundaes." Why didn't I think of this?

Size matters. Eat more.

So funny and how true in the world of ice frozen yogurt/ice cream. So here lives Frolick ("fro" and "lick"..love it!) and the creator of these awesome pins. Well not really here since if you are visiting Singapore soon then you can actually try it but none the less its a fun spot we've heard about and had to talk about. Who knew a fro-yo place could be edgy, anti-establishment, fun, politically incorrect, and health conscious all at the same time. Move over Pinkberry with your holier than thou attitude. Note...I have never had Pinkberry and do admire the brand but in tough times we all need something to make us smile and Frolick sure seems to do the job. If only it was nearby. Not sure how I even came across this place but its about time someone put the fun in frozen yogurt. Is their a reason one must feel like raising their pinky when they eat frozen yogurt? Well Frolick figured out that ice cream's skinny friend, frozen yogurt, could let its hair down once and for all and be good all at the same time. Check out their web site to see what we're talking about.

As for the yogurt, according to their web site, tasters claim it to be tart and refreshing. In the world of fro-yo that surely is no differentiator but their vision sure is. Unfortunately we can't visit a shop to truly see if this fun brand that lives online is actually carried out in stores and lives up to the raves but I get the feeling it wouldn't disappoint.

And as for these fun pins, get em while they're hot on their site.

What are the odds we can find someone who has actually tried this? If you are that lucky person I am sure we have some prize for you (well maybe if you can prove it!).

Zagat's Rates Frozen Treats...what do you think?

ZAGAT’S TOP ICE CREAM/CUSTARD SHOPS
1. Ben & Jerry's Scoop Shops [WINNER]
2. Rita's
3. Culver's Frozen Custard
4. Baskin-Robbins
5. Carvel

Scoopalicious analysis: Of course Ben & Jerry's tops the list....awesome ice cream, awesome attitude, awesome style. Only downside I see is its a little more expensive and let's face it they don't offer the largest scoops but it is well worth the price. My fave...Phish Food. So their other picks are tough cause I think this depends on where you live. And as for Carvel...well they all closed near me but you can still get the Whale cake at our local grocery store! Final thought: Although hard to find Ciao Bella rates up there and there's always the local Friendly's that is sure to please.

ZAGAT’S TOP SMOOTHIES/FROZEN YOGURT
1. Smoothie King [WINNER]
2. Jamba Juice
3. Pinkberry
4. TCBY
5. Orange Julius

Scoopalicious analysis: Where can I find me a Smoothie King in New England cause I must try before I can truly give my scoopalicious opinion? Have to be honest I am not a smoothie expert so if anyone has thoughts on these winners let us know what you think. Does TCBY still exist? And Orange Julius reminds me of my younger years....mom used to make them at home too. YUM!

ZAGAT’S BEST MILKSHAKE
1. Ben & Jerry's Scoop Shops [WINNER]
2. Dairy Queen
3. McDonald's
4. Cold Stone Creamery
5. Wendy's

Scoopalicious analysis: How did the Frosty at Wendy's make #5...seriously those are so good. Is it ice cream or is it a shake cause Lord knows you get instant brain freeze trying to immediately suck it through a straw but its worth the effort! Gotta say though that these are all good contenders. I might just have to hit a drive through on my way home from work today!



[Scoopalicious is celebrating National Ice Cream month with a Post-A-Day throughout the month of July!]

Pomegranate Pinkberry

So this is odd. I went to the Pinkberry site to try to explain Pinkberry to my friend Melanie and guess what? They now have Pomegranate Frozen Yogurt! So weird since I just wrote a post about a Pomegranate Buttermilk Sorbet I thought must taste very much like what would happen it Pinkberry made a pomegranate flavor. And they do! I promise I did not know they had when I wrote my post or created my ice cream -- I was just trying to use up ingredients and make my Buttermilk Sorbet taste better!

Image from the pinkberry.com site.

Recipe: Pomegranate Buttermilk Sorbet

So lucky for me that Lisa doesn't read my blog that much, because then maybe she won't know that dessert tonight is made up of leftovers!

I made my favorite carrot cake on Sunday, followed that by a quick bread, and I was still left with two cups of buttermilk. I don't know why they don't sell it in smaller quantities, because I don't know of one recipe that uses more than a cup of it at a time! So I looked up buttermilk recipes and came across a lot for buttermilk ice creams and sorbets. So I decided to follow one of the recipes from Cooking Light -- which was basically two cups of buttermilk, 1/4 cup of sugar, 1/4 cup of corn syrup.

I mixed and tasted it, and while thrilled I wasn't wasting any buttermilk, I wasn't so thrilled that it reminded me a lot of Pinkberry (and you know my feelings about that!). Should I add lemon extract? Orange? Then it hit me...I had a lot of homemade grenadine leftover from when I tried my first stab at Shirley Temple Ice Cream. I added 1/4 cup, but thought it needed more, so I added another 1/4 cup for a total of 1/2 cup of grenadine.

The sorbet froze up nicely, with a muted wine color. It still tasted a little yogurty to me, and with my sweet tooth, even though I love yogurt, when I am after frozen treats, I much prefer sweet sweet sweet!

What was nice about this recipe was that it was easy and quick. There was no stove prep, which was a nice break.

Lisa and I both liked the sorbet. As Lisa put it, "I feel like I shouldn't like it, but I do!" I know that sounds crazy, but I understand what she meant. It was very refreshing (I think it would be a great summer treat!) and at the same time, the sourness of the buttermilk was balanced by the sweetened grenadine.

Would I make it again? Not just for me. But it most definitely is a contender for I Scream 2009!

(Apologies for the photo quality -- had to use the iPhone because the sorbet was melting so quickly!)

Boston's J.P. Licks' Frozen Yogurt X

Yesterday my dear friend Amanda and I went to J.P. Licks in Harvard Square. Though I did settle on my favorite Oreo Cakebatter, I did want to try J.P. Licks' new Frozen Yogurt X (soon-to-be-named -- by you!): "Tart, tangy, non-fat, refreshing, no cholesterol, less sugar, millions of probiotic bacteria..." Hm, sounds a lot to me like Pinkberry...I asked for a taste and the scoop girl kindly agreed. Fancy that! It was much sweeter than I remembered Pinkberry to be (read my previous post on my Pinkberry thoughts), and I didn't actually hate it! Actually, it was good, but the truth is, I would never ever walk into an J.P. Licks and order it when I am surrounded by rich, sweet, creamy real ice cream.

But, if this is up your alley, run over to one of J.P. Licks' many shops in the Boston area before September 30, 2008 and taste for yourself, and then visit their site and suggest a name for a chance to one free medium serving of the new concoction every day for a year! (Or don't bother to taste it, as you can still technically name it without tasting!) 

Added bonus? Visit the flagship store on Centre Street in Jamaica Plain the weekend of September 28 and 29th and enjoy your frozen yogurt while visiting the 15th Annual Jamaica Plain Open Studios. (Stop by my old studio space at 128 Brookside Avenue and give a shout out to Gordon, Catherine, and Amy!)

 

Holy Cannoli Gelato at Cha Cha's, NYC

Yay another weekend in NYC for me! Love the city and even more fun when its a girl's weekend full of eating, sightseeing, cocktails, and of course, ice cream. Well Gelato in this case but something frozen and yummy.

So we head out of our hotel on 42nd and continue to walk, and walk, and walk, and walk until we hit Little Italy. I had never been to this part of the city so I was quite excited to see how it compares to our North End of Boston. Definitely much smaller than I anticipated but it was packed with people. Oh and one annoying opera contest that we couldn't seem to get away from. It was enough to drive me to eat more gelato to distract me. So anyways, this street is packed with good old italian eateries, street vendors, and wow lots of people. Definitely different than Boston's italian district...NYC is sort of like a piazza where Boston is a quaint street with old and new restaurants and a bustle of people on the sidewalks but nothing like NYC and its restaurants back to back with tables packed to the sidewalks edge.

So I was on the hunt for some funky gelateria but this district is truly authentic and style is not at the top of the list. So Cha Cha's sure jumped out at me or maybe I ran into it while dodging crowds. Who knows but at this point in the day, 4 hours of walking and 90 degrees and sunny it was a great find. As you can see by the picture above this is no fancy Pinkberry. It's full of character and what matters most is the gelato. They probably offered about 15 gelato flavors and 15 italian ice flavors.

So what was my choice...Holy Cannoli and Chocolate. I love cannolis and almost debated a cannoli over gelato so this was a great compromise. And the chocolate had a rich chocolate brown color that looked like it'd be intense in flavor. I had to scream to ask the guy what Holy Cannoli actually was and he responded back to me with a great native New Yorker accent ..."Ever heard of a cannoli...it has that in it!" No shit Sherlock! So my take is that its vanilla based with pieces of the cannoli shell and chocolate chips throughout (pic on left). Another answer I could barely hear sounded like they actually mushed filled cannolis in with vanilla gelato but I wasn't getting much of that ricotta flavor so not sure this is the case. In all it was good, not great. The chocolate was much better with a rich and smooth flavor. Regardless it was perfect after walking the city. My friend actually calculated that we walked 7.5 miles just that afternoon so I don't feel one bit bad about getting two scoops. Man, I should have gotten more!

Interesting factoid about Cha Cha's (which is actually a restaurant not just a gelato cart)..."The best thing about Cha Cha's is its owner John "Cha Cha" Ciarcia. He started off as a boxing promoter for Tony Danza and ended up as the "go to guy....when you need something done..if ya know what I'm sayin." Love Tony Danza!

[Scoopalicious is celebrating National Ice Cream month with a Post-A-Day throughout the month of July!]

15 Mile Weekend with Two Scoops of Ice Cream

This weekend was quite a crazy one. I went down to NYC on Friday with Kevin to visit Ashu. Saturday we walked up to the Guggenheim and then walked all the way down to the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory (to see our estimated route, click here). Seeing as we had walked some on Friday and at least a couple of miles today, and our route (especially across Central Park) on gmap wasn't perfect, we estimate about a 15 mile walk total this weekend...so I am not going to feel too badly about the two different ice cream places I sampled this weekend.

Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory

The reward at the end of crossing the Brooklyn Bridge was a sweet and creamy one. As we walked into the quaint little shop that was once a Fulton Ferry fireboat house, we stood for about 5-10 minutes in line -- a line that was 1. Much shorter than the one we passed at Grimaldi's Pizza on the way to the Factory, and 2. much shorter than the line that was there when we walked out with our ice cream. The line gave us time to take in the atmosphere -- a simple shop that has probably changed little since it was first opened October 13, 2001 (Interestingly enough, the shop was slated to open September 12, 2001, but the events of September 11th inevitably changed that). The focus of this shop is it's smooth, eggless (one might say "Philadelphia Style") ice cream, not the atmosphere in which it sits. The shop though clean, is cluttered with freezers and there isn't too much room to sit down. It is fine this way, as the best way to savor your ice cream is to go outside and enjoy the view of the Manhattan Skyline, and as one most likely does, lament on the broken skyline's missing twin towers.

The eggless ice cream is this way because eggs, owner Mark Thompson believes, give ice cream a "greasy flavor." Instead he uses a Pennsylvania recipe -- a recipe he found sans eggs.With only eight flavors, one isn't overwhelmed with choices, which is a relief this day and age. When I got to the counter I asked for vanilla chocolate chunk, but the kid at the counter told me they were out. Kind of disappointed, but also knowing any of these flavors would be good, I changed my cone to the same as Ashu's -- chocolate chocolate chunk. The ice cream wasn't a disappointment: rich, creamy, and just the perfect amount to satiate my sweet tooth and refuel us for our walk back across the bridge. A taste of Kevin's vanilla was lighter, and just sweet enough. A taste of the vanilla made me wish that they hadn't run out of the vanilla chocolate chunk -- I can imagine that would have been ice cream perfection. But alas, I still can't complain. It was good either way.


Pinkberry

While my passion is ice cream, my husband Kevin enjoys a good hot dog, and Ashu indulged us by taking us to some hot dog hot spots. Friday we found Papaya Dog in Hell's Kitchen as we walked from the bus station to Ashu's apartment, Saturday we stopped at a few street vendors, and today she took us uptown to Brooklyn Diner at 57th Street (where they weren't yet serving hot dogs but we indulged in some yummy breakfast as well as a Christopher Meloni sighting) and then up to Gray's Papaya on Broadway at 72nd to try their world renowned hot dogs and see their big sign in the window that supports Obama (Ashu is a huge fan!).

Alas, I digress. While on our way back from Gray's, we saw a Pinkberry (warning: you might want to turn off the sound; this site is kind of annoying!) and after Ashu's negative raving, I had to try. Though not actually an ice cream, but a frozen yogurt, Ashu tells me this is all the rave in the city and the lines at the shop we passed on Saturday proved case in point.

We walked into the stark, clean, stylish shop. There was one other customer in the shop, but he was gone minutes after we arrived. What I found so strange is that this woman took my order (I was the only one that ordered) and she took my name -- as if she would lose my order in the empty restaurant (Later I saw they had printed a little label with my name and stuck it on my cup -- I guess it would be useful when the shop was busy.) I ordered a original with raspberries ($3.95 plus 95¢ for a topping) and the server actually put my order on a scale! Then she used tongs to carefully place about 10 raspberries on the yogurt. The yogurt was just that: frozen yogurt. It wasn't the sweet, ice cream-tasting soft serve you get when you usually order frozen yogurt. It tasted cultured like actual yogurt that had been frozen. It had a bit of a lemony taste. The best part was the amazingly fresh raspberries. I agreed with Ashu in the sense I couldn't understand the lines. It wasn't that good. But it wasn't terrible. Just not something I would choose again. But as Ashu says "If someone were holding a gun to my head, and telling me to eat it, I'd eat it, but..."

Well, enough of ice cream eating in NYC...

Additional information for this post found in the article "Fire and Ice Cream" from the New York Times, Novemeber 25, 2001.
Thanks to Kevin for such great photos and Ashu for being a great tour guide!