I received an email describing an offer I couldn’t (and didn’t want to) refuse: Guinness-infused ice cream. Really! The Taylor folks (the PR firm for Guinness) wanted to send me a sample of “Lucky Sundaes by Guinness,” just in time for St. Patrick’s Day. I said, “yes, please!”
Some pints arrived, shipped via Goldbelly, from the ice cream maker, Tipsy Scoop. They specialize in boozy ice cream. They have several franchise stores in New York, and, coincidentally, one that just opened in Washington, DC. I couldn’t wait to try it, but I had to, since it was frozen good and hard. It was shipped with dry ice in a thoroughly insulated box. Goldbelly might be pricey, but they know their business.
After an interminable few minutes, I managed to scrape a few inches off the top of a pint. At first taste, it was creamy and sweet with a (not-unpleasant) bitter finish. I have to confess to being a little disappointed that it doesn’t taste enough like Guinness for me, but my fellow taster disagreed – she was sure she could find some stout in that mix. It also includes fragments of “maple pancake crunch,” which seem mostly harmless, but don’t add much in the way of taste or texture.
The label boasts “up to 5% alc/vol,” and the container lid reads in large letters, “Contains Alcohol – 21 and Over.” I’m not sure how much 5% translates to per serving (say ¼ of a pint?) but after consuming a small bowl of the plain ice cream, I couldn’t feel any effects on my attitude.
So much for the flavor eaten without embellishment, but I don’t think they named it “Lucky Sundaes” for nothing. We proceeded to enhance it in suitably Guinness-complementary ways.
The Theobromine Express
Guinness stout has always evoked echoes of both coffee and chocolate to me, so it seemed only fitting that we chose permutations of those two flavors for our versions of sundaes. Also, affogato is (another) one of my favorite things.
Espresso powder reconstituted with boiling water and poured over ice cream makes an excellent but short-lived serving. It must be eaten quickly, or else drunk – somehow appropriate – but either way, delicious.
Chocolate syrup yields a different experience, one that doesn’t demand such a compulsively fast consumption. It can be slowed down and savored. We made the syrup by grating Mexican chocolate and dissolving it in hot water, but let it cool. Then we topped the sundae with more grated chocolate. Then we added some espresso powder, because, why not?
The Grand Finale
And for the big finish, a Guinness float! We used Guinness Zero for this experiment, because drinking Guinness draught or extra stout, any way other than straight, is a sin against nature. And it was just fine! Guinness, Guinness ice cream, and chocolate syrup. I could ask for this as part of my last meal on Earth.
Using Zero gave us an unexpected bonus: after consuming a half-pint of ice cream each, without any added alcohol, we could judge how tipsy we in fact were as an effect of the ice cream alone – and we did, indeed, find ourselves subject to a gentle buzz. Not unpleasant at all.