Peanut Butter Pie
Peanut butter flavored ice cream with a chocolate cookie crumb swirl & peanut butter cups
Date Tried - May 12, 2023
Location - Outside Stewart’s, two picnic tables pushed together
Format - Cone
Milkshake it? - No
Buy Again? - Yes
I played baseball as a kid. And I liked it, too.
It’s a slow sport, sure, but it’s deliberate; it comes with a compendium of arbitrary and hilarious rules. It is self aware, really. It recognizes the level of absurdity at play—have you seen the outfits?—and leans into it threefold.
Perhaps that’s why, for some, the best part of playing baseball is when you get ice cream after the game. And why shouldn’t it be! Ice cream is a celebratory gift and is all the sweeter with soiled clothes and dried sweat still on your brow.
The evening I tried Peanut Butter Pie, we had just wrapped opening night of The Monarch Report, a play presented at the Recovery Lounge in Upper Jay. I volunteered to do the lighting for each of the five performances—a first for me—as well as some slight puppetry.
And, after the first of what would become five successful shows, it only seemed right to celebrate with a cone.
[Congratulations again and kudos to Andrew & Gabrielle for sharing their original theater production with our lucky little community.]
In my review of Very Berry Shortcake, a Limited Edition flavor, I said this: “…I do want to give you a sampling of this new class of Limited Edition flavors, so I’ll do my best to sneak one or two more into the fold before things wrap for good.” This was my intention—for Very Berry Shortcake to act as an ambassador of these new flavors that, due to time and wavering levels of inspiration, just simply wouldn’t make it into the newsletter. I was quietly resigned to this shortcoming.
The thing is, though…I keep trying the Limited Edition flavors. I can’t stop doing it. And, each time that I do, I extend the end date of ‘I Scream, You Scream.’ It’s an unfortunate consequence, but there is truly nothing that can be done. These flavors are REALLY good. I’m writing this on June 1st and, as of now, I have tried four of the six Limited Edition flavors that were released earlier this year.
Reader, I want this slow dairy march to be over—this exhausting literary effort that was requested by neither you nor anyone else.
I want it to be over…but I want it to be right.
Lisa had already eaten Peanut Butter Pie several times. She extolled its virtues to enough friends that it become apparent that this flavor would not fall victim to my reluctancy. This is fortunate because this is one of the most complete flavors that Stewart’s has to offer. Ice cream with a lot of mix-ins can sometimes give the consumer the sensation that they are visiting a series of old friends rather than experiencing something unabridged.
Hey, here’s cookie dough! Oh look, caramel swirl! Is that a peanut? Wow, a whole cherry!
This is not the Peanut Butter Pie experience. When you dive into this one, you know you’re encountering a single, complex unit.
Like when you eat a slice of pie.
I may have gotten this same sensation from Peanut Butter Pandemonium, but I definitely didn’t get it with Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup or Peanut Butter Cookie—the other three peanut butter flavors that have been a part of the challenge. And, unless I’ve missed a new Limited Edition flavor, I think the peanut butter road ends here.
It’s not just peanut butter (or peanut butter cups) at play here, though. It’s the magical candy compound for which Stewart’s should probably receive its largest ovation: the chocolate cookie crumble swirl. That swirl—or, as its known in the ingredient list, chocolate cookie variegate—is a downright alchemic mixture of soy, sugar, oil, cocoa, salt & cookie crumb. A long time ago, I chirped about it in my Mint Cookie Crumble review, but it’s high time I do so again.
Good on you, Stewart’s. Nice work with the variegate.
And nice work with Peanut Butter Pie.