2nd St. Creamery is a new super-premium ice cream that recently made its debut in Boston. To help spread the word about the newly available ice cream, 2nd St. Creamery offered to send me some pints to try. After looking over their website, checking out the flavors, and learning that each flavor has a story behind it (their motto is "the best stories make the best flavors"), I definitely wanted to sample some of their ice cream. I requested eight different flavors to try and was sent 13 pints, which I shared with Jeff's family one evening after we enjoyed a light dinner.
2nd St. Creamery sent me a gift card along with the ice cream, so I used it to buy some adorable, colorful bowls at Anthropologie -- to make our sampling more fun. I lined up all eight flavors on the table, and everyone tried whichever flavors they wanted and then made sundaes with their favorites. (Jeff's sister picked up real chocolate sprinkles and hot fudge from Crescent Ridge, and his mother made whipped cream to top our sundaes and some brownies for brownie sundaes.)
One of my favorites was Limerick Cherry Chocolate, which combines dark sweet cherry ice cream with cherries and chocolate chunks. It's like a more intensely cherry version of Cherry Garcia and it's incredibly creamy. The idea for the ice cream came from a limerick created during a long car ride.
Tons of Brownies was the crowd-pleaser of the night. What's not to love about vanilla ice cream with chewy chocolate chip brownies and fudge sauce?
The vanilla ice cream was simple, as one would expect, and super-creamy like the other flavors. It's called Vanilla #178 because it was the 178th batch of this ice cream that passed muster and became the version 2nd St. now makes and sells.
We all found Mint Chocolate Victory a little odd. I loved the minty flavor of the ice cream (though some weren't fans), but the ice cream is chock-full of fudge sauce, fudge cookies, and chewy brownies. I think we're all a little more used to chips in our mint chocolate ice cream, and the chunky, crunchy cookies and chewy brownies were a bit too unusual for our tastes.
Almond butter hazelnut fudge was my other favorite. The base is almond butter ice cream, which has a hazelnut fudge swirl. I just loved the texture of the ice cream and the nutty flavors. And the story behind it is quite funny and something that I'm sure would happen to me.
Sweet Ol' Joe is 2nd St.'s coffee ice cream, and it's definitely perfect for the coffee lover, especially with a little hot fudge on top.
The two sweetest flavors in the bunch were Copper Kettle Caramel and Cannoli di Nonni. Copper Kettle Caramel features caramel ice cream with a caramel ribbon and sea salt fudge truffles. Those little truffles were amazing. The ice cream overall is very tasty, but be prepared for the super-sweet caramel swirl.
That same caramel swirl is the downfall of Cannoli di Nonni. I expected to love the mascarpone-flavored ice cream with pistachios, fudge and caramel swirls, and cannoli pieces, but it was just way too sweet. I started thinking about it afterward and realized that if it lost the caramel swirl, it would probably be really good. (I've never had a cannoli with caramel anyways.)
Which flavor of 2nd St. Creamery ice cream would you most want to try?
2nd St. Creamery sent me 13 complimentary pints of ice cream to try, along with a gift card to throw an ice cream party. As always, the opinions here are my own.