I was meandering through the aisles at my local Kroger looking for a sweet treat to store in my freezer as an "emergency" and I came upon this Turkey Hill Whoopie Pie ice cream. I've had Whoopie Pies before, and while I've found them tasty, I've never really developed a strong feeling for them. I guess it's because I'm not a big marshmallow cream guy, but I'm not sure. Regardless, when something says "Limited Edition" on the packaging, I'm enough of a rube to grab it because I'm afraid that it might not be on the shelves next time I'm in the store. Why I allow myself to get affected by that is one of my life's great mysteries, but whatever. Anyway, as I said, I picked this one up at Kroger. It was on sale for $3.33 for a 48 ounce container. Each serving in the container contains 160 calories, which for something that is advertised as "Premium Ice Cream" is actually quite low and moderately healthy. I was actually very pleasantly surprised by this.
For the uninformed out there (that includes me), a Whoopie Pie is a cookie sandwich type concoction. It's usually made with two chocolate cake-like cookie pieces with a marshmallow cream in between. Also, its origin is kind of a controversy as both Pennsylvania and Maine claim to have invented them. Pennsylvania claims that they were invented in Lancaster County, which happens to be the home base of Turkey Hill, thus the claim on the packaging of this ice cream.
Opening up this pint, I was shocked by how much was going on in here. The ice cream is a very soft chocolate base (it stayed soft no matter how long I froze it; I found that to be a miracle of modern science. Well, sort of.) that is mixed with marshmallow filling and Whoopie Pie cookie pieces. One thing that was nice was that these Whoopie Pie cookie pieces were soft and doughy and did not harden in the ice cream and/or freezer at all. Again, a victory by science!
After examining the contents, I took my first spoonful and well....I'm not sure what to say. This was almost an out of body experience. The soft chocolate ice cream was creamy, had a strong taste of chocolate and was decadent in every sense of the word. Ordinarily, I prefer vanilla ice cream as my base ice cream over chocolate because chocolate flavor ice cream is usually so poorly done, but this was outstanding. Then, when I mixed that with the gooey marshmallow swirl, it was a match made in heaven. Just to top it all off and make this even more incredible were the soft, doughy and chewy Whoopie Pie pieces. Putting all three together would almost make your eyes roll back in your head as you were truly experiencing flavor euphoria. I will warn you though that all three mixed together is very sugary, so if you are put off by that, you might want to stay away.
That said, I frankly can't think of enough words to describe how shocked and in pure ecstasy I was in while eating this ice cream. Dear Lord, if this is what heaven is like, I want to go. All I know is that I could not eat this stuff fast enough and before I knew it, I had downed half the container without realizing it. I practically had to take the spoon out of my hands with the jaws of life to stop myself from eating the entire container.
Buy It or Fly By It? BUY IT, BUY IT, BUY IT! I've had some good ice creams in my life, but this one is pretty much in my top five automatically. If you do decide to buy it, you better do it quickly though because I'm not sure how long this one will be on the shelves as it is billed as Limited Edition. You should be able to find it at Kroger or at stores in the Kroger family such as Ralph's, Shoprite, etc. Regardless, find it fast and try to fight the urge to eat in the car on the way home because it is that darn good.
BUY IT!! |
Whoopie pies are huge around this area, some people call them gobs. If you and Dubba are giving this one the go ahead, I guess I'm going to have to pick this up.
ReplyDelete@Rodzilla: Trust me, you will not regret picking it up. It is incredible and definitely now one of my favorite ice creams of all time. Very sweet though, so beware.
ReplyDeleteHmmm, never heard of turkey hill. wonder if I can get it in minneapolis.
ReplyDeleteIt's the trans fats that keep it soft no matter what.
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