Unofficial Stop: LSA Library Social - July 29, 2009

Today was the annual library staff association ice cream social, which is filled with many, many different flavors of Christina's ice cream. I tried Black Raspberry Chocolate Chip, Butterfinger, Callebaut Bittersweet Chocolate, Chocolate Peanut Butter, Gina's Mocha Explosion, Green Tea, Kahlua, Maple Walnut, Mexican Chocolate, Mint Chocolate Chip, Nietzsche's Chocolate Ascension, Totally Hazelnut, Coconut sorbet, and Mango sorbet.

Green tea tasted weird - little too much like Green Tea for my taste with not enough sweetness, but everything else was great. My favorite was Gina's Mocha Explosion because it not only had chocolate chunks, one of my favorite mix-ins, but also brownie pieces. So the texture was creamy, chewy, and crunchy all at the same time. Mmmm.

Stop 8: Damons - July, 24, 2009

The excitement on this Damons' stop came from the appropriate flavor pairings of frozen yogurt and ice cream. You could twist vanilla and cappucinno or raspberry and chocolate. Usually the chocolate and vanilla are always together and the strawberry gets paired with a random flavor, which doesn't always work, such as the time we saw strawberry and raspberry twist. I got a little of everything and topped it with m&ms, raisinettes, and hot fudge. The fudge was very thick, like usual, but quite tasty. It also didn't melt the ice cream - an added bonus.

We all have vacations during the next month, but will resume our tour at the end of August.

Stop 7: Christina's - July 14, 2009

We started our time at Christina's by trying a few flavors. I tried chocolate banana, which had a strong banana flavor, but not much chocolate flavor. It almost tasted liked unsweetened cocoa powder. Andrea had some sort of butter finger flavor, which she reported tasted very strongly of butter finger and nothing else. Allison tried carrot cake, which she reported tasted like rich frosting. This wasn't my experience when I ate it in the past, so I'm not sure the samples do justice to Christina's flavors. Maybe there are too many spices and other mix-ins in each flavor to fully capture all the flavors on one sample spoon.

Anyway, I ended up having peanut butter chip yogurt, which was a new flavor for me. You don't find peanut butter frozen yogurt all that often and I had never had it with chocolate chips. It was creamy, with just the right amount of peanut butter flavor. The chips were small, which was unique. Usually there are large chunks of chocolate in flavors like raspberry chip or chocolate chip. The small chips were very flavorful and because of their size I got chocolate in every spoonful. Overall, 9/10.

Allison got coconut almond yogurt, which she reported was also very creamy and the best yogurt/ice cream she has tried so far on the tour. Andrea had chocolate orange ice cream which she was also very happy with. She reported it was like the orange butter flake she got at Toscanini's, but not as rich.

One scoop of ice cream (1/2 c.) was about $2.75 and two scoops were about $3.50 - an average value for an ice cream place in the city. I think the only negative was that the staff weren't as nice as at some other places. Everyone at Toscanini's is always very nice and upbeat and they let you spend a lot of time sampling. The men at Christina's seemed a little annoyed that we weren't ready to order right away. Overall, though, a great ice cream experience!

Unofficial Stop: Brown's - July 11, 2009

On our way back from Cape Elizabeth, ME, Rich, Andrea and I stopped at Brown's Ice Cream in York, ME, which the Boston Globe felt was one of the best in New England. Brown's is built behind a huge rock, which was really cool. You had to walk down the rock to get to the order window.

For the number of available flavors, Brown's gets 10/10. There were probably about 40 flavors listed, both traditional and creative, such as Blue Earth, Indian Pudding, and Winterberry. I got chocolate peanut butter frozen yogurt, which was really creamy with the perfect amount of peanut butter. Unfortunately I didn't notice Blue Earth until I had ordered, but I will definitely go back to try it. It's blue vanilla with oreo and something else in it (I forget exactly what). I give my frozen yogurt 9/10.

Andrea had mint chip explosion, which had a strong mint flavor, chocolate chips, and mini mint patties. We guessed that the mint patties was what distinguished this flavor from the regular mint chocolate chip flavor. Rich got kahlua fudge brownie, which had a strong kahlua flavor and a ton of brownie. The only negative was that the brownie was more like chocolate cake than brownie - it could have been more chewy.

It was $4 for a small, which was about 1 cup of ice cream. Most ice cream shops outside a major city would only be $2-$3 for this amount of ice cream, but Brown's was clearly capitalizing on the summer tourism. However, the ice cream was high quality with a ton of mix-ins and portion sizes were fairly large, so you got what you paid for. We'll definitely be back to try more of the interesting flavors.

Stop 6: Damons - July 10, 2009

For this Damons trip I got vanilla soft serve ice cream topped with caramel, blueberries and a few m&m's. You just can't beat m&m's on soft serve. It adds just the right amount of crunch and chocolate. Anyway, this was the first time I tried blueberries or caramel. The caramel was nice and hot and the ice cream was quite frozen so the caramel hardened on the ice cream rather than melting it, which was nice. It was a little more difficult to eat once hardened, but it still tasted great. I forgot how good caramel tastes on ice cream. The blueberries were also a nice touch. I'd definitely get them again if they're available.

Unofficial Stop: Ben & Jerry's - July 6, 2009

All summer Ben & Jerry's is offering bogo sundaes on Mondays so Andrea and I decided to check it out on our way to class. We both got hot fudge sundaes - mine with vanilla frozen yogurt and Andrea's with half-baked frozen yogurt. Overall, both were quite good. They were served in big bowls, but we didn't seem to get much more frozen yogurt than if we had ordered a small cup. There was probably about 1 cup of ice cream in the bowl, but it wasn't packed down. There was a lot of fudge and it was good. Not too thick, not too thin. There was a lot of spray cream and I didn't eat it all, but it made the sundae look more impressive. We paid $6 for the two sundaes, which is only $2 more than a single small cup of ice cream. Overall the bogo sundae experience was 8/10. And it was much easier to come back from a holiday weekend and go to class knowing that a sundae was awaiting me after work.

Stop 5: Damons - July 2, 2009

A few weeks ago Damons replaced two of their four frozen yogurt flavors with soft serve ice cream and this was the first time we tried it. It tasted slightly more creamy than the frozen yogurt, however the difference was very subtle and if I didn't know it was ice cream I wouldn't have been able to tell the difference between that and the yogurt. It seems that vanilla and chocolate will always be the two ice cream flavor and the yogurt flavors will vary (they had strawberry and cappucino when we were there).

I had a base of strawberry yogurt topped with a little chocolate/vanilla ice cream twist. My toppings included strawberries, rainbow sprinkles, m&m's and raisinettes. Damons may not be new and different but you really can't beat the price (we usually pay between $2 and $3 for about 1/2 to 1 c. of ice cream) or the a variety of toppings.