I live in the US and when I was at the supermarket yesterday I bought a tub of Haagen-Dazs ice cream which was of a new flavour: “Trio”.
It is “layers of crispy Belgian chocolate, white chocolate and milk chocolate ice cream”.
I just went to the freezer and my sneaky spouse has eaten almost the whole tub!
I also bought a Ben & Jerry’s 1 pint tub as it was on special offer at $2.88. US comedian Stephen Colbert’s “Americone Dream” - Vanilla ice cream with fudge-covered waffle cone pieces and a caramel swirl. We also have B&J’s ‘Red Velvet Cake’ but was disappointed in it tbh.
I’ve been to the manufacturing plant of Ben & Jerry’s on the drive back from Stowe in Vermont, where they do a small tour and give smaller samples and encourage you to spend money on souvenirs in the gift shop. The business was sold to the huge Unilever company and I suspect (like Kraft/Mondalez taking over Cadbury’s) inferior ingredients have probably been substituted and the quality isn’t what it once was.
Over here there are ice-cream shops/parlors in almost every town or roadside. We have a Haagen-Dasz and an ‘Emack and Bolio’s’, with a Baskin Robbins inside the Dunkin Donuts on the outskirts of town. There was a Carvels but it closed. However a nearby town has a Cold Stone Creamery
www.coldstonecreamery.com - where the ice-cream is put on a slab and you can choose things like gummy bears, choc chips etc. to be mixed into the ice-cream.
Another local town has a Dairy Queen (not a fan) and there is a Magic Fountain, stand-alone independent and large kiosk, only open in the warmer months and looks like it’s been there since the 1950s or 60s.....families line up for ages in the early evenings to buy. Portions are huge!
The latest fad in our area is rolled ice-cream, originally from Thailand. It’s like a kind of Swiss roll of ice-cream with mix-ins and choice of toppings (pics on www.zrolls.com).
My favourite ice-creams ever though (which sadly I can no longer buy) are:
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Swiss ice-cream brand Movenpick Salted Caramel - it had little balls of fudge which pop open and liquid caramel would ooze out....absolutely divine!
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Trader Joe’s (US store) Lemon creamy ice-cream with tiny pieces of lemon zest....fabulous and sadly discontinued :(
My son bought an ice-cream maker as a gift for my husband but tbh he hardly ever uses it...it’s hardly ever used as there is just so much choice over here.