Get Ready for the Scooper Bowl, Boston!

We haven't been as good at posting as we would like (and we hope this changes as it usually does in the summer!), but didn't want to forget to remind our Boston friends that next week is the Jimmy Fund Scooper Bowl. (Non-Boston friends, too -- there's still time to get here to Boston for the biggest ice cream event of the year!)

The event runs from Tuesday, June 3 through Thursday, June 5 from noon to 8 p.m. every day at City Hall Plaza, Boston.

Read some of our previous posts here to get motivated for the event -- as if all-you-can-eat ice cream isn't enough of a motivator!

Scooper Bowl 2013

The all-u-can-eat ice cream event raised almost $300,000...wow!

We did it again. We fought crowds a couple weeks ago in order to test flavors at the Jimmy Fund Scooper Bowl this year. And that we did. Between the two of us we had 32 scoops...ouch. Almost a little embarrassing but hey its our duty and it was worth every bite!

Each brand has four flavors to choose from and its all you can eat!

First of all, I have to get on my ice cream soap box about Scooper Bowl etiquette  Common sense? When you grab your ice cream or ice creams turn around and keep walking. I don't say this to be rude, but the place is so crowded that it just makes sense to clear out so more people can get in. People seem to linger by the tents, which just makes a crowded area even more crowded. Oh and the poor Moms with strollers...we empathize....it is barely impossible to get a stroller. But enough about that...

Bethany & Tina live at Scooperbowl. 

I think we both agreed that the flavors really weren't that exciting this year. Lots of the expected...Mint Chocolate Chip, Oreo, and Chocolate. The past years seemed to bring on new and a few more interesting flavors. But really this is a fundraiser and for an awesome cause so at the end of the day who cares! It's all good. But here are some thoughts: 

Bethany: 

Whenever I think Edy's, I think of one of my mom's favorite commercials: the dog high-fiving his owner over the promise of Edy's. (I could only find the Dreyer's version of it, but as I understand it, Dreyer's is the West Coast brand, and Edy's is the East Coast brand.) Anyway, Edy's Tropical Rainbow Sherbet was worth the Edy's high-five.) It was light, refreshing, and super creamy.

I liked Friendly's Celebration as well. It was a party in a cup!

While I have already given a rave review to Ben and Jerry's Liz Lemon that was another favorite, as well as Hood's Raspberry Granola Greek Frozen Yogurt (stay tuned for this review as I got some more flavors mailed to me from Hood and I was pretty impressed!).

Tina: 

Ok so I have to admit now that I am writing this a couple weeks later not much stands out but their were a couple I know I would go back for. I really liked Hood's Double Chocolate Chip Greek Frozen Yogurt. It was very creamy and I loved the chocolate chips in it. I also have to agree with Bethany on Friendly's Celebration. I am all about Cake Batter these days and I loved how this actually had cake pieces in it. And lastly Byrne Dairy's Green Monstah made a lasting impression. Interestingly they don't list Green Monstah on their site. I think they might have made that name up for the Boston occasion (they are NY based) so I think it really is their Grasshopper Pie. I love anything mint so that was a keeper as well.

All in all it's a can't miss event that we look forward to every year!

Another indulgent year at Scooper Bowl

 

Jimmy Fund Scooper Bowl 2012

Thankfully Mr. Weatherman was wrong. Sun brought crowds and fun. 
We met at 5:30 and looks like we weren't the only ones having an ice cream dinner.

Can you guess what the blue one is? We couldn't!

Volunteer scoopers hard at work.

Ben and Jerry's Greek Frozen Yogurt is a hit.

My favorite of the day...SoCo Creamery.

SoCo Creamery can't scoop fast enough.

Now these are diehards. Looks at all those cups.

All for a good cause. My daughter loves her new hat.


I am almost embarrassed to admit all that we tried but that is what you're there for! Some brands offered their tried and true flavors while some ventured out. Sort of felt like every one was serving up Cotton Candy but then again this is an event for kids too and if I had my daughter there that is what she would be eating...not the Mission Fig. I think the booth that inspired and intrigued us the most was SoCo Creamery. I had heard of them before but never actually tried them. They definitely had a crowd and offered up the most unique flavors. 


And drum roll for all the flavors we taste tested (see below). Funny thing is my husband called me on the way home asking what I wanted for dinner. Silly question...we had ice cream!

Soco Creamery

Lemon Poppy Seed (Tina's top pick!)

Salted Caramel (Bethany's top pick!)

Mission Fig

Cake Batter

Ciao Bella

Passion Fruit Sorbet (SO refreshing)

Malted Milk Ball Gelato
Strawberry Gelato 

Baskin Robbins

Splish splash

Lunar cheesecake (A 1969 flavor revisited! Bethany's second?)

Super Fudge Truffle (worthy of seconds)

Icing on the cake

Hood

Hood Bear Creek Caramel

Hood Maine Blueberry and Sweet Cream

Brighams 

Peppermint Stick

Edys

Espresso Chip

Rainbow Sherbert (Another very refreshing flavor)

Friendlys

Hunka chunka PB Fudge

Graham Central Station

Rockin Poppin Cotton Candy

Byrne Dairy

Mint Chocolate Chip

Holy Cow

Ben and Jerry's

Chocolate therapy (OMG!)

Americone Dream

Blueberry Vanilla Graham Greek Froyo

Boston's Jimmy Fund Scooper Bowl is 1 week away...yippee

The event of all ice cream events is only 1 week away. Boston will hold its annual Jimmy Fund Scooper Bowl, the all-you-can-eat ice cream (yogurt, gelato and sorbet too!) extravaganza on Boston's City Hall Plaza. Seriously we start planning for this months in advance and gather up all friends to join us for an ice cream lunch. I am totally bummed this year because I am traveling 2 of the 3 days the event is being held so I guess I'll just have to make my one day worthwhile. 

Jimmy Fund Scooper Bowl 2011

Tuesday, June 7-9, 2011

Noon - 8pm

Boston City Hall Plaza

Here are all the awesome flavors. So excited to see my favorite Key Lime Graham gelato from Ciao Bella once again and am excited to try Ben & Jerry's Americone Dream. Oh and I just tried Baskin Robbins S'More the Merrier...OMG..love it and will definitely plan on getting a couple scoops of that one. Check out all the flavors to expect and like usual I am sure there will be more.

Baskin-Robbins®

• Lucky Mint
• Firehouse #31
• S'More the Merrier
• Oreo®Gold Rush

Ben & Jerry's®

• Late Night Snack
• Americone Dream
• Milk and Cookies
• Bonnaroo Buzz^TM
• 
  
• Ciao Bella Gelato®
• Chocolate S'mores
• Mango Sorbet
• Wild Blueberry Sorbet
• Key Lime Graham Gelato

Edy's®

• The Original Rocky Road
• Cookies and Cream
• Orange Sherbert
• Espresso Chip

Friendly's

• Hunka Chunka
• Vienna Mocha
• Mocha Chocolate Chip
• Rocky Road

HP Hood/Brigham's®

• Hood BoSox Brownie
• Hood Frozen Tangy Yogurt Rasberry Vanilla
• Brigham's Oreo
• Brigham's Mocha Chip

SoCo Creamery

• Dirty Chocolate
• Vanilla
• Espresso Cookie
• Berkshire Berry
• Mexicali Chocolate

Chicago's Luxury Ice Cream Festival - July 30/31

Okay so we're cutting it close on this event but if you happen to be in the Chicago area this weekend you must check this out. It's on Friday and Saturday July 30 & 31st from 7-10pm. We at Scoopalicious rave about our own hometown all you can eat festival, Scooper Bowl, but it looks like Chicago is showing us some serious competition with their Luxury Ice Cream Festival. Now the two festivals definitely have a different take...main stream brands on a city plaza with lots of kids, music and fun and the other is artisan flavors in a chic museum, The Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, under the stars with beer and wine. Each I love for different reasons. Who doesn't love watching kids eat as many scoops as they want and being able to do the same with fun music and tourists buzzing all around. But I do have to say a night out in a cool museum with cocktails and micro-creamery ice cream sounds pretty darn good too. 

Tickets are $25 for 25 tasting stations of various ice cream, gelato, chocolatiers, pastry chefs, and more. For a night out that's not too shabby especially when there was also a grilling section on a rooftop terrace of a Nature Museum with beer and wine tastings too!


I am not all familiar with these chefs but you might be if you are from that area....go check out Gino Bahena, Michelle Garcia, Christine McCabe's cool creations, plus artisan ice cream from Black Dog Gelato, Nice Cream, Vosges haut Chocolate, Homer's, Oberweis, Sassy Cow Creamery and many more! 


We'd love to hear more about this. If you happen to end up here this Friday or Saturday please drop us a line and share your experience.


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

Scooper Bowl 2010...oh how we already miss you!

From the desk of Bethany: 

I think it would be kind of cool for both Tina and I to wrote a little about the Scooper Bowl and since I am on the couch relaxing and catching up from the Annual Ice Cream Party (more to follow) I thought I would take a bit of time to write my post.


For me, the Scooper Bowl always kind of kicks off the summer for me, even though the weather this year was kind of dreary and overcast and chilly to say the least...


This was a pretty cool Scooper Bowl though. A month or so ago we got an email from Russell over at Ice Cream Geek (your super awesome source for the science behind the ice cream making...) saying he'd be in Boston (from Dallas) for the Scooper Bowl this year. I have to admit, T and I were both slackers about replying and then when we did reply, we suggested we meet at the end or even after because the usual Scooper Bowl craziness seemed a little tough for meeting a new ice cream friend. But it turned out the Scooper Bowl was a little emptier thanks to the dreary weather and we ended up meeting Russell and his lovely wife Kathey in the confines of the Bowl's fences. (That's me, Tina, and Russell above.) What fun people! We had a nice time talking ice cream (favorite flavors of the day, the science behind ice cream -- the kind of stuff people with an ice cream obsession might talk about...) Tina had to get back to work but I had some time before my next meeting downtown. I joined Russell and Kathey for lunch at Wagamama (a favorite of theirs from their days in Sydney -- and, we come to find out, all three of the United States locations are in Boston so they just had to go!) Anyway, conversation continued to follow with talk of ice cream (well, duh) and some recommendations of Boston tourism. We really had a great time and hope to see them at next year's event!

From the desk of Tina: 

I agree with Bethany that Scooper Bowl is such a kick off to the summer and an event that really gets us excited to launch into our busy blogging season. It gets us chatting about all the different brands and flavors and how we might be able to do it better (no all the time of course but we try!). So since I work right around the corner in the city we usually do an ice cream lunch and I have one precious hour to hit up all the flavors or as many as I can handle. It's not as easy as you think to have 30 scoops in one hour. Really have to be selective. And this year it was even more exciting as Bethany mentioned we hooked up with another ice cream blogger whose wife labels him "The Alton Brown of Ice Cream"...seriously he truly knows the science of ice cream...so cool chatting with another person so into the art. So B and I did our rounds then went for seconds with Russell and Kathey before I had to unfortunately go back to my desk and try not to fall into an ice cream coma (very difficult by the way). 

As you can see below we had some favorites. Each year we see many of the same flavors but I am always excited for what's new. My favorite from the "what's new" category was Ben & Jerry's Bonnaroo Buzz. LOVE the coffee and malt ice cream and then the whiskey caramel swirl was as they say in Boston Wicked good! Others worth noting from me....Brighams' Peppermint Stick, Ciao Bella's Key Lime Graham Gelato, Haagen-Dazs Caramel Cone, and Gifford's Chocolate Lover's Chocolate.

All in all this event never disappoints even if the weather didn't work on our behalf (actually the rain helped us...so much less elbowing for scoops) and I want to thank Dana for supplying us with tickets to raffle off to our lucky winner Laurie (we'd love to hear all about your visit Laurie!). I can't believe I have to wait another year for this but it really got me excited for what's ahead during these next couple hot months.

Of course, a Scooper Bowl post wouldn't be complete without some flavor reviews, so we've posted below all the flavors and our comments...


The list below is copied from the Scooper Bowl site, and is the ranking from their "Text Your Favorite" -- our comments are next to it each (if we tried it). Bethany in orange, Tina in pink...

Ben & Jerry's® Boston Cream Pie	10.40% I had actually already tried this one the day before, but I LOVE it. I LOVE the custard (pudding?) swirls...Definitely a favorite of the day.
Ciao Bella Gelato® Key Lime Graham Gelato	9.30% Yum. Tina's recipe might be better though! Discovered this in NYC a couple years back and its always been at the top of my list...super creamy, refreshing and full of flavor.
Häagen-Dazs® Caramel Cone	9.30% I love anything with Caramel in it but this one is awesome..
Baskin-Robbins® Wild 'n Reckless Sherbet	7.00% Wow. I don't know about this one. Purple, blue and green and super sweet. Certainly not refreshing as many sherbets are. (pictured in top photo)
Ciao Bella Gelato® Mango Sorbet	7.00%
Baskin-Robbins® Superfudge Truffle	5.70% Um, yum if you love chocolate and lots of it. (pictured in top photo)
HP Hood® Fenway Fudge	5.70%
Ciao Bella Gelato® Blood Orange Sorbet	4.70% LOVED this. SO refreshing and wonderful. And wonderful color! Wasn't my favorite but tons of flavor and refreshing.
Breyer's® Cherry Vanilla	3.50% Breyers is local and I feel badly saying this, but I have never been the biggest fan of Breyers. That being said, I might have to change my mind, I LOVED this.
Brigham's® Cookie Dough	3.50% Pretty good. Nothing special.
Ben & Jerry's® Bonnaroo BuzzTM	2.30% I tasted Tina's. Probably would have liked it more if I liked alcohol and coffee flavoring. LOVED it! Probably my favorite new flavor I tried. I love coffee ice cream and malt flavor so that with the whiskey caramel swirl was awesome. B&J never disappoint.
Ben & Jerry's® Milk & Cookies	2.30%
Breyer's® M&M Vanilla	2.30%
Edy's® Birthday Cake	2.30% Always a favorite. I am a birthday cake ice cream nut! I love how Edy's swirls in frosting into their version. This is a fave of mine from Edy's.
Garelick Farms/Gifford's® Cherry Amaretto Chocolate	2.30% Oh, yum! It was just okay for me but I am not a huge cherry fan.
Garelick Farms/Gifford's® Chocolate Lover's Chocolate	2.30% Very rich. Now I know why this one got "the world's best chocolate ice cream" at the World Dairy Expo....rich and awesome.
Garelick Farms/Gifford's® Maine Lobster Tracks	2.30% This was good, but I got no lobsters in my entire scoop!
Häagen-Dazs® Bailey's® Irish Cream	2.30% Super smooth and flavorful. Could probably only eat a little due to the strong flavor but do like it.
Häagen-Dazs® Lemon Sorbet	2.30%
Baskin-Robbins® Premium Churned Light Mint Oreo®	1.20% Not fair I missed this one and Mint is my favorite.
Ben & Jerry's® Hannah Teter's Maple Blondie	1.20% So not a fan. This was either too maplely or too fake tasting. I am leaning towards the latter because I LOVE the maple ice cream I make that uses an entire cup of dark amber maple syrup per quart, tastes so yummy, and doesn't taste like this ice cream.
Ben & Jerry's® Phish Food®	1.20% Probably my favorite B&J flavor...the light version is just as good too.
Breyer's® Chocolate	1.20%
Breyer's® Strawberry	1.20%
Brigham's® Mocha Chip	1.20%
Brigham's® Peppermint Stick	1.20% (pictured in top photo)
Ciao Bella Gelato® Malted Milk Ball Gelato	1.20% Good, but again, Tina's might be yummier. She'll need to share her recipes! Good but I think I liked mine better with dark chocolate chunks in it and a little stronger malt flavor.
Edy's® Maxx Chocolate Cookies & Cream Collision	1.20%
Edy's® Maxx Chocolate Peanut Butter Chunk	1.20%
HP Hood® Rainbow Sherbet	1.20%

And the winner is....

Lucky "Laurie" is the proud winner of the pair of Jimmy Fund Scooper Bowl 2010 tickets. Have fun Laurie and its the one time we can't say "don't eat too much" because we hope your pile of cups is as tall as this little ones!

Jimmy Fund Scooper Bowl 2010

June 8-10

noon-8pm

Boston City Hall Plaza

Last chance to win tickets to Boston's Jimmy Fund Scooper Bowl 2010

Yippee...only 7 more days til I eat about 20 cups of ice cream in less than one hour. Man does that sounds indulgent or what! And only one more day until you can enter to win a pair of tickets to The Jimmy Fund Scooper Bowl 2010, the all-you-can-eat ice cream event at Boston City Hall Plaza on June 8-10 from noon until 8pm everyday.

Post a comment by the end of the day Tuesday, June 1 for a chance to win a pair of tickets to this super fun event!

The Jimmy Fund Scooper Bowl 2010 - Your chance for FREE tickets

Oh the day we wait for all year long is quickly coming and we couldn't be more excited! Its Scooper Bowl 2010, the all-you-can-eat ice cream extravaganza on Boston City Hall Plaza that supports cancer care and research for adults and children at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Wow, its been 27 years since the Jimmy Fund Scooper Bowl has been gorging people of all ages with ice cream and in return has raised more than $2.65 million for cancer research. Simply amazing and just awesome!

This year it means even more to me for more than one reason. Not only am I a huge ice cream fan who attends this event faithfully but cancer runs way too close to me as well. Recently a close family member was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and she is fighting every step of the way. Not only is her husband a cancer survivor (he is the 5% with his rare form of cancer that has made it almost 10 years!) but she also has an even more rare form and is fighting the battle in the most positive way. SO if it takes eating a little (more like a whole lot!) of ice cream to help make a difference I am there!

And we want you to be too because its super fun, super yummy and all for a great cause. If you are interested in trying bottomless cups of more than 30 flavors of ice cream on one given day and taking part in this super fun event just post a comment and we'll be raffling off a pair of tickets (compliments of The Jimmy Fund Scooper Bowl..thanks Dana!). Comment by the end of the day Tuesday, June 1st to qualify.

Comment and win a pair of FREE tickets!

Jimmy Fund Scooper Bowl^®

^{presented by FedEx}

^{Tuesday, June 8 – Thursday, June 10, 2010}

^{Noon – 8 p.m. every day}

City Hall Plaza, Boston

http://www.jimmyfund.org/eve/event/scooper-bowl/default.html

Scoopalicious and Friends Visit Boston's 27th Annual Scooper Bowl

Today is the last day of the Scooper Bowl for the year. It seems like it was only yesterday we were anticipating the month of June in excitement for one of our favorite events of the year, and now, like another birthday, it has quickly come and gone.

Scoopalicious made it over to the event yesterday. Though the weather was downcast (but not raining) the crowds were unbelievable. I thought that the impending weather might keep people away and make it a more accessible day for us to "report" back, but Tina thought maybe because the weather in Beantown was downright awful, that yesterday's crowd came today.

Either way, we had a good time, and enjoyed the company of each other as well as our friends Alouette and Steve (a.k.a. Spaghetti) and ate ice cream until we were sick!

Here are the flavors we got to choose from...

Baskin-Robbins® (This was the second stop so we actually tried them all!)

• Cotton Candy. Yum, Tina and I both liked this one. What are we? Thirteen?
  
• Rock 'n Pop Swirl. Pop Rocks in ice cream, I guess. I thought they were Nerds because they didn't pop, and the ice cream tasted grape. First grape ice cream I ever had. Not a huge fan.
  
• York® Peppermint Pattie. Tina and Alouette loved this one. Me? Too minty. I am not a fan of anything too minty.
  
• Premium Churned Light Raspberry Chip. Very good. Love the chocolate and raspbetty combo, but particularly liked the swirls of raspberry sauce throughout.
  

Ben & Jerry's®

• Orange & Cream. I don't remember this being an option.
  
• Oatmeal Cookie Chunk. Yum. Tina, Alouette and I were all big fans. Tina liked the fact that the chunks were chocolate, not raisins.
  
• Chocolate Macadamia. Did not try.
  
• Goodbye Yellow Brickle Road. I really liked this. Tina wasn't as impressed. Our big question of the day? What is brickle? Answer: Practicallyedible.com describes butter brickle as: "It's small, shattered, crunchy pieces of golden-brown coloured, buttery-tasting hard toffee, which are also sometimes sold as "toffee bits." Ben & Jerry's site says Goodbye Yellow Brickle Road is "Chocolate Ice Cream, Peanut Butter Cookie Dough, Brickle Candy Pieces, & White Chocolatey Chunks." I tasted the chocolate and what I thought was brickle, but did not taste the white chocolate or peanut butter chunks. Tina tasted the peanut butter cookie chunks, but took them to be peanut butter cups.
  

Breyers® (Did not try any of them. By the time we got there we were too full! Sorry, Breyers!)

• Vanilla
• Coffee
• Cherry Vanilla
• Cookies & Cream

Brigham's® Ice Cream

• Vanilla
• Chocolate
• Confetti & Cream. Brigham's Cake Batter. Very good. Why do so many cake batter ice creams have blue icing swirled in? Tina says it is to appeal to the kids. She's probably right.
  
• Black Raspberry Frozen Yogurt

Edy's®

• Coffee
• Take the Cake. I love all cake batter ice cream. This one fit the bill!
  
• Mint Chocolate Chip
• Low Fat Caramel Praline Crunch Frozen Yogurt

Garelick Farms/Gifford’s®

• Chocolate
• Old Fashioned Vanilla
• Mint Chocolate Chip Yogurt
• Maine Lobster Tracks. I wasn't thrilled with this, but Steve loved it.
  

Häagen-Dazs®

• Zesty Lemon Sorbet
• Chocolate
• Bailey's® Irish Cream. I don't like liquor flavored anything. This, however, was amazing. Wow.
  
• Vanilla Honey Bee. We had vanilla. Was it Vanilla Honey Bee? Either way, it was wonderful. Man, Haagen Dazs is the creamiest ice cream there is. Hands down. Um, could Haagen Dazs be any more of a pain to spell correctly though?!
  

HP Hood®

• New England Lighthouse Coffee
• Cookie Dough Delight. I did not try this one. Tina did. She thought it was good, but again, there were so many and it wasn't among her favorites.
  
• Fenway Fudge. Another one of our favorites of the day!
  
• Maine Blueberry & Sweet Cream Frozen Yogurt. I love blueberry ice cream. I don't know how I missed it. But I think I may have had this before and it was yummy when I did!
  

Spasso

• Amaretto gelato
• Dulce de Leche gelato
• Chocolate gelato
• Chocolate Chip gelato
• Crema Café gelato
• Lemon sorbet
• Coconut sorbet
• Mango gelato. Alouette said this tasted "flowery." I had a taste and could see why she would say that.
  
• Raspberry gelato. This was good, but not particularly anything I would write home about. Ok, really, I don't actually write home much about ice cream -- if they want to know, they read my blog -- ok, I guess I wouldn't blog home about it either.
  
• Zabaglione gelato

I hope I didn't miss anything, but between the sugar high and all...I can't say that I remembered everything. I think of the Scooper Bowl as kind of the pub crawl of ice cream -- you know you enjoyed it, but can't exactly remember why.

One thing I just wanted to mention, just in case you forgot, was that the Scooper Bowl is $8 for all you can eat. It's a pretty good deal. But if you need more convincing, consider it your good deed for the day. All proceeds go to the Jimmy Fund. Want to learn more about the Jimmy Fund and it's history? Mass Moments by Massachusetts Council for Humanities has a nice summary here. And for all of you Massachussettsians, Mass Moments is a great daily email that sends some little known facts about, um, Massachusetts. Kind of fun!

In closing, here are some pictures...

But hey, stop reading and looking at our pictures and get to the Scooper Bowl -- last day is today, Thursday, June 11, from 12-8pm.

An overview of the fun. Funny, aside from the little girl in the bottom of the frame, it looks like all adults. This is not the case. In fact, schools take field trips to the Scooper Bowl. As much as I like ice cream, I can't quite find the educational value in that.

Volunteers. Next year, we want to!

A Baskin Robbins ice cream cone. There was also a large pint of ice cream walking around too, but I am not sure what brand it was. Does it matter? It's not everyday you see a giant pint of ice cream shaking hands and waving...

Haagen Dazs was on top of things. At some counters you had to wait while they put out the popular ones, and the lines were out of control and there was a lot of grabbing. You had to be fast. Not HD (I am just going to abbreviate, I have decided...). They were there. They were ready. They were prepped. And no lines.

And one (or twenty? I couldn't quite count how many cups she has) for the road...