Black Raspberry
Black raspberry flavored ice cream
Date Tried - October 25, 2022
Location - Walking home from the Keene Stewart's near dusk
Format - Cone
Milkshake It? - Yes
Buy Again? - Yes
For a brief period of time as a child, Black Raspberry was my favorite flavor. I don’t know when I first discovered it, but I’m nearly certain that it would have been a half gallon of Breyers that did the deed, allowing me to shun the populace’s chocolatey leanings for fruit-based options—sharply sweet and brightly colored treats that convinced me outright that we are the music makers, the dreamers of dreams.
Let’s clear one thing up: when we say “black raspberry”, we’re talking about blackberries, which is actually a term shared amongst a number of berries that exist in the Rubus genus. We must remember that—like the annals of history—frozen dairy desserts are not precisely bound by the Ropes of Truth. I say this because the Breyers Black Raspberry offering was just that, a frozen dairy dessert—it does not contain enough dairy milkfat to legally be called ice cream. Luckily, Stewart’s does not toy with such fallacy. However, a review of the ingredient list for their Black Raspberry ice cream reveals that it contains a mix of black and red raspberries.
Sneaky? Sure. But perhaps this gets us semantically closer to the elusive “black raspberry” middle ground than we ever could have hoped.
And now we come to a momentous milestone: my first cone! (As part of the challenge, anyway.) Lisa and I had gotten our COVID booster shots the day before and decided to walk our achy bodies down to the shop for some fresh air and a deserved treat. There are some flavor options that can only be found at the scoop counter, so I asked the scooper which these were. She replied blankly that it would be too much work to cross reference the flavors in order to figure out which ones were counter-exclusive.
I like to think that it was the first time she had been asked that particular question and I don’t begrudge her non-answer.
After a little online digging, I found that there are only five flavors sold exclusively at the scoop counter. And of those five, Fireworks is the only non-seasonal. [Canonical, if you will.] Lisa ordered Pumpkin Pie—one of the seasonals—and I tried a small taste on our walk back. I will not count this taste as being officially part of the ‘I Scream, You Scream’ challenge; judgment cannot be passed after a single lick taken off the record. It belittles the cone experience—need I say more?
I find Black Raspberry highly agreeable because, as a flavor, it is unabashedly a smooth talker. Say what you will about its fruity tartness or its childlike coloring…its smoothness is where it accomplishes the most. It’s not a flavor I return to with the same childhood zeal that I once displayed. But when I do return, I’m never dissatisfied.
Thanks for sticking around, old friend.
Thanks for always showing up to practice, even though you know there’s a good chance you’ll continue to ride the bench.