Yes, I have a thing for ginger.
Big-time.
Whether it’s pickled, fresh, crystalized, or dried, I can never get enough of it. That sweet-heat on the back of the throat wins me over every time.
So you can just imagine my delight when two new ginger products landed on my front porch for sampling.
First up, the new Haagen-Dazs “Five” ice cream flavors. There are seven flavors — each of them containing only five ingredients: milk, cream, eggs, sugar, and one wild card for flavor. The five-ingredient concept is played up to denote purity and simplicity. The ice cream comes in vanilla bean, milk chocolate, mint, coffee, brown sugar, passion fruit, and ginger.
Guess which one I opened first?
That would be correct.
The mouth-feel of these ice creams is wicked good — rich, smooth, and creamy as all get out. But then you expect no less from Haagen-Dazs.
The ginger one had a musty-ginger flavor. It had fairly subtle heat, too. Perhaps, too subtle for a true ginger addict like yours truly.
I had high hopes for the brown sugar one. After all, it tastes exactly like brown sugar. But let’s face it, how much brown sugar would you really want to eat? After one taste, that’s pretty much enough.
The vanilla bean was the epitome of purity — very vanilla-like. The milk chocolate made me think of my childhood — in a good way. It reminded me of eating cups of Carnation frozen milk chocolate out of paper containers with a tiny wooden spoon.
My favorites were probably the coffee (very perky tasting), the mint (incredibly cool and refreshing), and the passion fruit (like a tropical island on a spoon).
Next up, the Ginger People’s new Ginger Snaps. A 5.3-ounce box is $5.50.
Dainty as can be, the cookies are hardly bigger than your thumbnail. But boy, do they pack a ginger wallop. No wonder, as these crisp, tiny little things are made with ground ginger, candied ginger, and ginger juice.
The heat lingers on the palate for a good long time.
For a ginger junkie like me, it’s impossible to eat just one.