Once there were no baked goods in ice cream, and it was very good. Then someone said, "Let's put wads of cookie dough in ice cream," and lots of people thought it was a good idea.
(It was not a good idea.)
Then came the inundation: cookie pieces in ice cream, brownie bits in ice cream, cake batter in ice cream, pretzels in ice cream. Pretzels! I ask you!
(Pretzels do not belong in ice cream.)
I used to think I was pretty flexible about ice cream flavors. I liked fruit flavors, and coffee variations, and anything chocolate or caramel or liqueur-flavored. And then the ice cream powers-that-be started with the baked goods.
We have a cute little neighborhood ice cream shop that sells delicious ice cream with fun-sounding names for the flavors. But without fail, the new and interesting flavors are teeming with baked goods. I just can't do it -- texturally, conceptually, it doesn't work for me.
Once I read a New Yorker article in which the authors looked at age-related reactions to novel stimuli-- maybe it was new styles, new recreational activities, and new foods. If you didn't have a tattoo by the time you were x age, they concluded, you were never going to get a tattoo. If you didn't start rock-climbing by the time you were y age, you wouldn't be a rock-climber (maybe). And if you didn't try sushi before age 32 or something, you were unlikely to enjoy sushi at age 35 or 40.
I read this article when I was 27 or 28, approaching their cutoff ages. I remember thinking about foods I had encountered that were completely unfamiliar to me. We just didn't have Ethiopian food in my West Virginia town, but wow is it delicious. The first time I ate Thai food I found the flavor combinations so unfamiliar and exciting that I couldn't get enough. I thought it would be sad to taste something equally different later in life and be unable to appreciate it.
I never suspected the issue would rear its head at the ice cream shop.
Clearly I am in the minority on this question, because ice cream with baked goods is proliferating. Do you have an opinion on baked goods in your ice cream? And how old are you?
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