My bruises have bruises. I'm blaming the cheerleading. Review writing is a whole lot less dangerous....
My bruises have bruises. I'm blaming the cheerleading. Review writing is a whole lot less dangerous.
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To celebrate yesterday's sunshine I spent today tracking down ice cream treats for the freezer so the next time summer-like weather hits I won't be so unprepared. Smarties ice cream has been around for ages in tubs, but I have only just discovered the Smarties cones that you can buy. Smarties cones are simple ice cream cornets filled with ice cream that has crushed Smarties mixed into it, and topped with whole mini-Smarties. It's not hard, you could DIY at home and, to be honest, you might be better off doing that. Here's why.
The ice cream used for Smarties-themed goodies
is extremely suspect. It is supposed to be vanilla but it barely tastes of this. Forget Carte D'Or or Haagen Dazs, this is ice cream at its cheapest and tastes of such. For one thing, the texture is all off - the odd bits you get without Smarties in break off into flecks if you so much as look at then. The ice cream is not creamy or even a nice colour - it's a strange shade of white and looks and tastes much more like a children's ice cream than an adult or family one.
The cornet is strange because it has been frozen, so is not nice and fresh, but frosty and brittle. It tastes reasonable, but cannot compare to a room-temperature one taken from a freshly opened pack. Its one redeeming grace is the chocolate lining that seems to come as standard. This covers the entire inside of the cornet and culminates in a pool of chocolate at the bottom of the cone - much more than many other products will give you. This makes the base of the cornet much more secure and less-crushable as well as adding some much needed flavour to the snack.
The inclusion of the Smarties adds both positives and negatives to the whole thing. On the one hand the Smarties on top are nice, though even when frozen it's only the orange ones that have any real flavour. Still, they don't seem to be harmed by the freezing process, and are a nice alternative to a sauce topping, or a flake. The crushed Smarties in the ice cream, however, are a different story. These are pounded to such an extent that they barely have any flavour or texture remaining - therefore what you are left with is the dodgy ice cream mentioned above, littered with colour Smartie blood but no real shell or chocolate chunks to break up the texture. If you eat regular Smarties with wet fingers you get colourful smudges on them when the shell colours start to come off - this is the kind of colour you get in the ice cream. Blobs of yellow and green and orange and red flecked here and there, like someone in the factory had dubious hygeine...
All in all the flavour of the product is a bit dubious, and not as nice as it could be. To make matters worse, the packaging doesn't help things as the stuff they've opted for (a paper wrapping and a slightly thicker cardboard circle top) is flimsy meaning that the ice creams get dented in the shop, on the way home and while in your own freezer if you don't eat them immediately. This can cause the topping Smarties to dislodge from the ice cream and retreat to the sides, leaving even less texture in the ice cream when you do come round to eating it.
At almost 200 calories the ice cream compares reasonably well to other adult treats but is worse than many children's ones which is a shame because I think that given the taste and composition this is the kind of product that will appeal more to kids than their parents. £1.10 for one on average is also not a bad price, but you can get a fresh whippy for that around here, and they just taste so much nicer.
However, all is not lost. The idea of the cones is a good one, and as such can be replicated at home with good effect. Take a fresh cone and blob a bit of chocolate spread in the bottom. Freeze for an hour or so to set the chocolate while retaining the freshness of the cone. Take a scoop or two of good quality vanilla ice cream and sit it out until sufficiently soft. Then, stir in some whole mini-Smarties before returning to the freezer. When it's time to serve, scoop this into the cornet prepared earlier, top with yet more whole mini-Smarties, and voila. Inspired by and yet unusually better than the real thing.
Recommended only because you need to try it once in order to get the idea right for doing it yourself at home.
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May 6th, 2006
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