Ice Cream and Summertime

July 3, 2013 By

 

Disclosure: I was provided with coupons to try each of these products free of charge. All opinions are my own and no other compensation was received.

Ice cream and Summertime

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well, it has arrive. Summer, that is. I love the lazier days and letting the boys play in the sprinkler. For Nico’s birthday we got a bunch of great Nerf SuperSoaker water guns and then kids have been having a blast drenching each other. But something that really screams summertime is ice cream and Popsicle.  You all know I’m not huge on snack foods, but there is something about summer that makes ice cream a necessity. Like a right of passage.

I have to admit I have a hard time passing up a frozen treat on a stick. Unilever sent me some really great treats to try, and even if they aren’t non-GMO there is a time and a place for them. Summer happens to be the time, and the backyard happens to be the place. There really isn’t much better than being able to give your kids (and you too) a fun treat (remembering what treats really are, treats, not daily foods) after a hot day in the sun.

Larry and I enjoyed the Rocky Road Klondike bar. Larry has had a soft spot in his heart for Klondike bars for as long as I’ve known him. What wouldn’t he do for a Klondike?

The boys have been sharing their Popsicles with our neighbor’s niece. They all get outside in the kiddie pool or running through the sprinklers and all of a sudden then are all back inside, hot and drenched, asking for a banana, lime or root-beer Popsicle. I remember being a kid and doing the same thing with my cousins. We loved having Popsicles on hot summer days.

Probably my favorite summer treats so far have been the Magnum Gold? The ice cream bars truly have a golden hue, filled with vanilla ice cream and sea salt caramel. I was nice enough to share one with my neighbor (but just one!). These are a more adult ice cream treat, something that is fun to savor and dripping with more complex flavors like sea salt caramel, dark and white chocolate. They are for ice cream lovers with a sophisticated taste.

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I plan to have Good Humor York ice cream bars available to my guests for the 4th of July. I love the flavor of peppermint and chocolate. And I found out a great little tip the other day, simply by accident. I figured I needed to try these bars out before I could review them, right? Because how can you review something if you haven’t tried them, right? But before I could get more than one bite in, my youngest was calling me upstairs to put him back in bed. I spent a good 5 minutes with him and when I got back downstairs the Good Humor York ice cream bar has started to melt and was an amazingly satisfying texture. It was actually perfect.

My father has always been a big fan of Breyer’s Ice Cream so I plan to have a bit of that on hand too. He enjoys a good brownie covered in Breyer’s vanilla ice cream (and really, who doesn’t?). This is an easy treat to make and I can fashion a yummy gluten free brownie for the Breyer’s Ice Cream to rest on. OR, maybe I will really offer a huge throw back to my younger days and get some toaster waffles (gluten free of course) and make Waffle Ice Cream Sandwiches. My mother was FAMOUS for these.

The last treat we got to pick up was Fruttare Fruit bars. I, of course, had to get the lime bars. Summer  is better with lime. Limeade is a favorite in this house. The Coconut sounded amazing too.

I hope you get a chance to enjoy this summer with some of your favorite treats. What flavors make summertime really summer for you?

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I Scream for Ice Cream

July 10, 2012 By

Ice Cream

I can not resist a good ice cream. No matter how hard I try to eat healthy and “real” food, I always have room for ice cream. My husband is the same way. It is truly our downfall. We have different tastes in ice cream as he likes flavors like banana and butter pecan and I’m more of a cookie dough and mint chocolate chip girl, but we both fell in love with the MAGNUM Double Caramel premium ice cream bars. They are made with scrumptious vanilla ice cream covered in chocolatey coating, caramel and Belgian milk chocolate. They were so good that I only got one from the box! The caramel is soft and rich and made the bar really a treat for adults, although I’m sure kids would love it too(they never got one!). MAGNUM also has Double Chocolate, Classic, Almond, White, Mochaccino, Mint and Dark. I don’t think I could choose which to try next, maybe Dark, no maybe White, argh I don’t know they all look so good. Mint, yeah, Mint!

My husband also has a weakness for Klondike bars. He has had this weakness for as long as I can remember. His favorite has to be the Heath bar, which he promptly bought without giving me a choice. That is OK, I like Heath too. But I think I may have chosen the Caramel Pretzel if given the chance. I love the sweet and salty combination. Klondike also has Rocky Road, Neapolitan (a favorite of the kids), Double Chocolate, Oreo, Reese’s, Dark Chocolate, Krunch, Mint Chocolate Chip and of course Original.

And what blog post about ice cream could be complete without discussing Breyers. Breyers was our ice cream of choice in my home growing up. My father loved their peach during the summer and butter pecan the rest of the year. My mother would make me ice cream sandwiches using their chocolate between two homemade waffles. This was the quintessential summer dessert. Oh the memories! When Matthew’s diet changed and he was allowed ice cream he would choose Breyers Vanilla. I liked that it didn’t have a ton of weird stuff in it.

For a cold treat on the Fourth of July, we decided to let the boys try Dora the Explorer Slow Melt Popsicle treats. I was kind of excited when I read they didn’t have artificial color in them so I grabbed a box even though it contained HFCS. But then I started reading the ingredients and wondered what they meant by “slow melt”. I found they had ice structuring protein, so I did a little research. I found a paper discussing Ice Structuring Protein in Unilever products. It spoke of a genetically modified yeast that is fermented and produces the Ice Structuring Protein. I do not endorse GMO’s and so I opted to not allow the boys to try this product.

The last product we got to try was the Good Humor Reese’s Peanut Butter Ice Cream Cup. They were really yummy. They tasted just like frozen Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, which is a good thing. My middle son saw my husband eating one and has been begging for one non-stop ever since. The magic of chocolate and peanut butter!

I was provided with free boxes of each product for review. All opinions are my own.

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