Ben & Jerry's R&D

Last year, I went to Ben & Jerry's and tried to describe my experiences in R&D.

Just the other day, when I was looking up the clip about iCream Cafe, I found this clip that shows it way better than I did. (And it has John in it, who worked with my blogger friends and me when we were there!)

A [moving] picture speaks a thousand words.

Enjoy!



P.S. I am loving the show Kid in a Candy Store! It's up there with Unwrapped!

Schwan's delivers something sweet right to your doorstep

I always love to come home to a styrofoam container on my doorstep because that means some great brand wants me to test out their ice cream and let you all know how it is. So really, who turns down ice cream especially when it is delivered to your doorstep. This time around the ice cream was from Schwan's. Honestly I hadn't a clue who or what Schwan's was so quick to my computer I went to and turns out they are an online grocer and food delivery service providing "delicious, easy-to-prepare meals and friendly personalized service". Hmm..let's see a full time job, two kids, and a blog to keep up with…sadly prepared foods are right up my alley. When I said the name most friends said "hey I've seen those trucks" but I can't say I know anyone who has used the service. Unfortunately we didn't get any pizza or crabcakes but we were lucky enough to get a 1/2 gallon of Loaded Waffle Cone with Peanut Butter Swirl Ice Cream, another of Monkeying Around Banana Ice Cream, and a Rainbow CONFETTI™ Ice Cream Cake. 

Lord knows I could probably eat all this ice cream we get myself but I really do try to share it with others so they can also give their opinion because one person's opinion might not always be the best review. So lucky enough I had a playdate planned…the perfect occasion to break out the Rainbow CONFETTI™ Ice Cream Cake. I can't even tell you how excited the kids were to have ice cream cake. Why do ice cream cakes only seem appropriate for parties? All it is is ice cream in a cake form. Why not eat it every day? So anyways we broke open the box and saw a sort of sad looking cake but I have to take credit for that as I don't think the 40 minute ride there did it any good. It is not so big either, about 7",  but plenty for the small group we had. So I think I have to let this video speak for itself about how much the girls loved this cake. And there truly was no prompting as they loved it and came back for seconds.

The adults had a different take on this and I am in this pool of thoughts. I was totally expecting the "confetti" to be more like sprinkles but as the kids described they were sort of like Nerd candy. Very sweet and it was throughout the ice cream so there was no avoiding. What I do have to say I loved was the whipped topping. Very similar to the Carvel cake frosting..ooh so good.  In all the cake goes for $12 and serves about 8 people. I think for a small kids party this would be a great dessert but not an ending to an adult dinner party. 

Have you ever used the Schwan's food service? I really am interested to know how it is. Some of the products really look good and I heard the service is supposed to be top notch. Drop us a  note if you have. We'd love to hear more about it.

Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream

Husband, if you are reading this, I know you will want to be in charge of the actual "Let's Try It!" post, which means that all of our lucky readers will get to see how liquid nitrogen ice cream turns out for Scoopalicious. Readers, stay tuned for our own experiences sometime in the future.

Someone I know that works in a restaurant -- or is that someone I know that knows someone who works in a restaurant -- told me that they use liquid nitrogen to make their ice cream and the liquid nitrogen makes the ice cream super creamy. I wish I knew who told me this, because I would for sure have them be a guest blogger, but since I don't, we'll have to use this very well done video from Food Science with Dr. Kiki Sanford on 5min.com:

Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream

That looks like so much fun! And mixing and churning in under 5 minutes?! Awesome! Thanks for sharing, Dr. Sanford!

So Husband, get your cryogenic transfer container so we can get our liquid nitrogen and get this ice cream churning!

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

Celebrating National Strawberry Sundae Day with The Naptime Chef!

So I am going to cheat just a little today and in lieu of a sundae, persay, we are going to focus on strawberry ice cream because The Naptime Chef just did a fabulous blog post and webisode for some extremely delicious looking Strawberry Mint Ice Cream and she has been kind enough to let us post her webisode right here! We think you'll find this as a replacement to the sundae quite worth it!

We've been a fan of The Naptime Chef since we discovered and posted about her very own Great Ice Cream Festival last August. Intrigued, we even interviewed her for the post and found out she is a master of all trades in the kitchen, and her skills go well beyond ice cream making. I even found she's only two degrees of separation in the whole Six Degrees of Separation, having had attended a small private girls school in New York with one of my dearest friends.

Anyhow, enough of a preview...let's get to the main feature:



You can also watch this and other Naptime Chef Webisodes at Mevio.

Enjoy!

Thanks, Naptime Chef!

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

WQED Pittsburgh Does Ice Cream

Better late than never...I know this is a pretty late post. In fact, I only have 54 minutes to make it fit into Friday!

My amazing friend Betsy saw part of an ice cream show on WGBH (I guess it was produced by WQED Pittsburgh, though)...but the really awesome part? She couldn't find when it airs again, so she found it for me on YouTube (in 6 parts).

Part I (9.55)

Part II (9:57)

Part III (9:58)

Part IV (10:00)

Part V (10:00)

Part VI (7:31)

I haven't seen it yet...I saw a little clipping. It looks interesting though!

Thanks SO much, Bets!

A Video Starring Ice Cream!

So here at Scoopalicious, we try to find ice cream exposed in all types of media. My sister, Arianna, sent me this video: J Dilla's Nothing Like This...watch it through or skip ahead to 1:44 in the video, and you'll see why , on Arianna's suggestion, I posted it.



I have to say, I am not familiar with the late J Dilla, but anyone who puts oversized walking ice cream cones in his videos is OK in my book. Oh, and he has an album called Donuts...sweet fans unite!