Ambrosia Frozen Custard - Vanilla with Chunky Fudge

Lady Luck is firmly on my side recently! Not only did I finally find the Covent Garden Mulitgrain Risotto I've been after completely by accident, but on Saturday the lovely Nibs tweeted that Ambrosia were releasing a frozen custard, initially in Morrisons and on Ocado. My interest was certainly piqued but my Morrisons may as well be Hell on Earth and I wasn't planning on an Ocado order any time soon. I was rummaging the freezer in Sainsbury's for the Ben & Jerry's Cookie Dough 'Wich when what should I find but the frozen custards! Funny how things work out.. 

I got to Googling, as from what I remember the recipe for ice cream is basically a custard but it seems there are a few differences. According to U.S FDA Guidelines (I'm assuming a similar sort of standard goes for the U.K), for a frozen dessert to be considered a frozen custard it has to have a higher (1.4%) percentage of egg yolk solids - a smaller percentage means it's ice cream. Wikipedia informs me "true" frozen custard is a lot denser than ice cream, up to 100% overrun - half of the finished product can be air in soft serve ice cream but in frozen custard it is around 15-30%, similar to gelato. 

I couldn't really care about the minor specifics as long as it tastes good and I love me some Ambrosia custard! 

Things had started well even buying the things - 

- look at the size of these bad boys! 850ml compared to a standard 500ml Ben & Jerry's and quite a bit cheaper at £3.25. Though if you're still paying full price for B&J more fool you, seeing as they're always on offer somewhere! 

I got carried away and bought myself both flavours, Vanilla and Vanilla with Chunky Fudge but I decided to kick things off with the latter. 

Vanilla flavour custard ice cream with fudge flavour sauce and fudge chunks. 

So, after all that its not even technically a pure frozen custard and it shows in the consistency. It couldn't have been any softer straight from the freezer without being a melted mess! It was a lot closer to soft scoop ice cream than any other big brand ice cream being sold in the supermarkets with the exception of Walls Big Bite - if you've tried that, this is how soft it is, although to be fair it does have a much thicker and fuller mouth feel. 

 The flavour is vanilla, still I expected some kind of similarity to custard but the yellow was about as far as that went. There was no distinctive custard taste and not too much vanilla if I'm honest. There tend to be two types of vanilla: proper, delicious vanilla bean style flavour and the vanilla which is more of a plain base flavour, which sadly this is. It's OK but a bit boring. 

Confession time, the tubs are huge but I was hungry. I ate the lot, good job really as the top section only had the fudge chunks you can see and a tiny sauce swirl. The fudge pieces were interesting, some were soft and more caramel-y in nature and seemed to melt away and some were a lot firmer and stickier with a chewy fudge like texture. I wouldn't have been happy if I'd bought a bag of fudge and they tasted like these, quite bland and sticking along the plain and boring theme but the texture at least gave me some satisfaction. 

And this is where my greediness comes into play. 

The bottom two thirds had a lot less fudge chunks but a whole lot more sauce and thankfully, its delicious. The flavour alternates between fudge and caramel though I find them to be quite similar anyway, and it's lovely and strong. It's sweet and rich yet was perfectly manageable amongst the duller vanilla and fudge chunks. 

It wasn't just mine, Mr.1T had exactly the same problem with his (yes, we're both pigs but we're doing you a favour) in that all the sauce was mainly in the middle and bottom of the tub. 

The sauce has a thick gooey consistency and the texture of that combined with the creamy soft custard/ice cream hybrid and the chewy sticky fudge was a winner. It's an easy eat, lighter than a heavier ice cream and reasonably priced but there are a few issues with the distribution of the fudge and sauce (not quite as bad as the Cadbury ice cream mind you) but if you want my advice, find some way to eat from the bottom up! 

Rating:

A disappointing start, I'd have liked a lot more sauce and a better base flavour. 

6/10 

E. Wedel Créme Brûlée

Staying with Poland and back to E.Wedel, today's review is Créme Brûlée. It's a dark chocolate with a Créme Brûlée flavour filling but the chocolates not too dark at 50%. 

The bar was nice and dark to look at and while it did smell noticeably darker than milk chocolate it was still pretty sweet. 

It was portioned the same as the previous E.Wedel bar I'd tried with square blocks with a funny pod type thing on top of each. The bar didn't snap into very even squares, the pod things were quite flimsy and made it difficult to break the chocolate up - I wouldn't have been able to portion squares off without getting the centres everywhere so I had to eat it all at once.. 

There are two different parts to the filling, the first is the cream coloured that runs thoughout the bar. It had a slightly strange gritty texture, that looking at the ingredients seems to come from Caramel flakes. The flavour is lovely - sweet and creamy with a custard flavour. The texture while a bit weird is perfect for the bar, it really reminded me of slightly toasted caramelised sugar and mixed with the flavour is perfect for Créme Brûlée. 

The pods had the actual caramel flavouring though, made from caramel paste it was very thick, runny and gooey and despite looking it wasn't overly sweet. It went well with the creamier filling running through the the rest of the chocolate. 

I really enjoyed the chocolate itself too. It didn't have a very dark flavour and at times tasted more like a plain chocolate than dark but it was delicious and complimented the sweet Créme Brûlée middle well, a milk chocolate would probably work as the filling really is tasty but it would be bordering on sugar overload. 

I really liked this bar, individually the chocolate was good and the two different fillings were good but a mouthful with all three together was just delicious. 

My favourite so far of the E.Wedel bars. 

Rating 8/10 

Two more The Lickators ice creams

So after I was finally allowed a Lickators Marshmallow Law ice cream the ice cream thief - as he shall forever be known in my house - appeared with two other flavours (I knew there was a reason I'm marrying him!). Doughnut Disturb for himself and General Custard for me. 

General Custard is "a decadent blend of British milk and whipping cream pimped up with eggs and vanilla pods". The vanilla is the dominant flavour first off, sure enough the vanilla pods are there in abundance and clearly visible all the way through. Each mouthful began as vanilla which gave way to a rich custard taste. It really is a lovely flavour which although is quite plain compared to the others in The Lickators range and similar brands is delicious and is an interesting twist on usual vanilla. 

The custard is addictive and got better and better the more I ate, as before it was very moreish. The quality of the actual ice cream is again very nice and extremely creamy with the eggs adding a lovely richness. It's sweet as you would expect with anything like this but sugar actually comes third in the ingredients list to milk and whipping cream - this also has clotted cream in it so it's no wonder it's thick, creamy and rich! For me it was a perfect mix on all parts - not too thick, not too much vanilla, not too much custard, not too rich - you get the picture - they were all just right. 

I was all ready to write here how it's good but there are more exciting flavours at this price range (the usual price is £5 I believe) but writing this review and reading the ingredients has made me rethink that a bit. £5 isn't really too bad of a price - when Cadbury are pretty much charging the same for the frozen lump of chocolate ice cream - for an ice cream using good quality British ingredients and there aren't many you'll find for cheaper doing the same. Anyway I did enjoy it but I think I preferred Marshmallow Law as I do love a mix in, this was very enjoyable though. 

Rating 7/10 

He had the Doughnut Disturb, a "devastating mash up of cinnamon ice cream, cinnamon ripple & doughnut style pieces". Sugar is second in the ingredients list on this tub but on opening it it's the first thing you could literally see! Word for word when he opened his tub he said to me "oh bloody hell there's sugar sprinkled all over the top!" I'm guessing that would be to mimic a sugared doughnut which is a nice touch. 

He's not too interested in writing stuff down (unless it's anything to do with football) so this part of the review is more me asking him questions... 

He agrees with all my comments on the actual ice cream "oh yes very creamy!" And "it's weird it's rich but yeah not too rich" so that's that. He's never had cinnamon ice cream before (claims to have never actually had cinnamon but I know for a fact he has!!) I said it's quite a warm flavour and he said "oh, it didn't really taste warm it wasn't too strong but it was really nice my second favourite and better than any Ben and Jerry's". How dare he!!

 The doughnut pieces weren't miniature doughnuts but more like little chunks and apparently were soft but still chewy and tasted just like a doughnut, there was no mistaking them and he really enjoyed the mixture between the two. Again comparing the two brands, he does admit that the chunks are smaller in this tub than of Ben and Jerry's but, and I have to include the but, the pieces were much more flavourful than any he's had from B&J. 

His rating 8.5/10 

We both do agree on one point though, if we'd tried these two first they'd be firm favourites but the we really enjoyed Marshmallow Law!