Alden's Ice Cream

[DonRocks]

I'm having their Peanut Butter 'n Chip, and while I think Alden's is a fine store-bought product (four sample ingredients lists are here), I strongly object to the way the peanut butter is essentially "forced" into what is otherwise a generic vanilla chocolate chip. Scooping randomly from the carton into a bowl, then sitting down and eating, you'll find not a hint of peanut butter for five minutes, and then suddenly you'll happen upon a striation, or a clump, that takes up nearly 90% of the next two or three bites. There has got to be a way to more evenly distribute this peanut butter into the ice cream.

"Intelligent scooping" is not a good answer. It is 2 AM, and I want a BOWL OF ICE CREAM, and not think about how to ration the colonies of peanut butter amongst the starving neighborhoods of plain-old vanilla chocolate chip.

It's good, don't get me wrong, but it's very adjunctive, and obviously not the first product they came up with.

Cheers.

Rocks.

[Pat]

I like the butter brickle but have also noticed that the butterscotch is not distributed too evenly throughout.

[Scott]

I like the butter brickle but have also noticed that the butterscotch is not distributed too evenly throughout.

I have the same problem with salt on pretzels. We can put a man on the moon, but when is someone going to make pretzels with evenly distributed salt?!?

I haven't tried Alden's swirled ice cream flavors yet, but I've tried the vanilla and mint chip and both are excellent. I would think that the "swirl problem" would be really annoying for peanut butter swirl, but no so annoying for fudge swirl.

[stickmoon]

I tried the cookies and cream flavor...there was no distribution problem with the cookies, but overall the ice cream wasn't creamy enough for me. It didn't taste as smooth as most other ice creams and I personally like letting my ice cream melt into something of a "soup," and when I did so it never reached the right kind of creamy-cold consistency that I get from other brands. Plus, I thought it was a local brand, and evidently I didn't look closely enough or else I would have learned it is local only if you live in Oregon.

[goodeats]

For Alden's fans, the ice cream is now on sale at the Falls Church-Seven Corners Target (which now sells groceries) for $4.69 each, which is about $0.70-$1.00 less than what WF charges, iirc.