Review: Private Selection Pecan Pie Ice Cream

The Private Selection procession continues (like that rhyme?) with today's review adding to my review collection that was caused by an absurd sale at Kroger where I made a binge purchase of these pints of Private Selection ice cream.  These pints typically sell in the $3.00 range, but the mega sale at Kroger allowed me to get this pint of Private Selection Pecan Pie Ice Cream for a bargain basement price of $0.99.  The pint consists of the obvious four half-cup servings of ice cream and each serving comes in at 230 calories of goodness that reminds me of my favorite part of Thanksgiving and the year-end holiday season.

The base of this pint is made of of a standard (but gourmet since it is a premium brand) vanilla ice cream that is then mixed with bits of pecans, chocolate flecks, buttery pecan sauce and pastry crusts to emulate the namesake pie.  The buttery pecan sauce was spread liberally throughout the pint and there were tiny bits of pecans linked within that sauce.  The chocolate flecks, while present, were not all that amply spread throughout.  The pastry crusts were fairly large and flaky pieces of pie crust, but while they were also not ample, they were definitely present as well.  All in all, the standard ingredient (save the addition of chocolate flakes) of the namesake pie were present and accounted for, so from a presentation standpoint, this got off on the right foot.

I started off by tasting the base ice cream and to no surprise, it tasted like vanilla ice cream.  The one thing that was somewhat unique about this ice cream that was fluffy, almost like a bizarre form of whipped cream that you'd put on top of the pie.  The presentation of this pint combined with the almost whipped cream like form of the vanilla ice cream made this even more of a winner on the resembling a pecan pie standpoint.  As for the rest of the pint, the buttery pecan sauce was definitely rich and did taste like the interior of the pie and I appreciated that.  One thing that I particularly appreciated was that it was not overly rich and sweet because sometimes the pie can be too much of that and become almost so rich that it causes tooth pain (yes, that has happened to me).  There was no such threat here.  As for the rest of the ingredients, they were what you'd expect them to be.  The chocolate flakes brought uncustomary chocolate flavor to the pie presentation and the pecans were pretty much pecans, as was the flaky pastry crust.  All three of these things brought crunch to the presentation and for a crunchy junkie like myself, I always appreciate that.

Buy It or Fly By It?  This was a solid job by Private Selection (Kroger) in emulating the namesake pie, so it gets a BUY IT rating.  While it was obviously not the pie itself or as good as the pie itself, it did a good job recreating the holiday (at least my holidays) treat and for that, I appreciate it.  If you enjoy pecan pies as much as I do, I definitely think that you'd find this enjoyable if you saw it at an of the stores in the Kroger family.

BUY IT!!