Nick's Swedish Ice Cream

Swedish ice cream.  I didn't know it was a "thing", but given my love of ice cream, I was excited to discover a new brand, Nick's. 

There are two things you might notice when you first look up Nick's ice cream.  It might be the "funny" spelling of things, like "Mint Chokladchip", "Peanöt Butter Cup", or "Birthdäg Cake".  Or it might be the nutrition stats, that hover under 300 calories ... per pint.  At least one of these things is certainly part of what makes the ice cream "Swedish" ... at least in name.  

"Sweet Natural Science. All our sweeteners are carefully crafted from plants selected for their specific flavor. But it'll probably just taste like delicious ice cream to you."

So what makes Nick's so low calorie?  It is the use of interesting sweeteners, in part.  Not just Stevia, but also soluble corn fiber (which makes it creamy, in addition to adding sweetness), and erythritol (which comes from fermented fruit?).  Add this up, and you get a pint for the usual calorie load of a single scoop.  Of course, there are many low-cal ice creams on the market these days, and, well, most really aren't very good. 

Nick's doesn't skimp on interesting flavors, in addition to covering all the basics (Triple Chokläd, Cookies and Kräm, Strawbär Swirl, Vanilj, etc) they also have some more interesting ones like Cherry Choka-Fläka, Peanöt Butter Karamell, and Swedish Lemon Bar.  All flavors are keto friendly, and they also make a vegan line.  In addition to the pints, Nick's also makes a single variety of ice cream novelty item, ice cream sandwiches, with big chocolate chip cookies and vanilla ice cream inside.  240 cal each.  My store did not carry these.

I was eager to try some flavors, and selected a few pints fairly randomly when I saw them at the grocery store, without doing research first.

Swedish Cookie Dough.

"Vanilla ice cream swirled with chocolate and mixed with chunks of sugar cookie dough."

First up I tried the Swedish cookie dough.  I picked this without really reading the description, thinking, "oh, cookie dough - I know this!"  So I was surprised when I opened the pint to see chocolate swirled throughout, and cookie dough hunks that had no chocolate chips.  In fact, no chocolate chips were anywhere in the pint.  Doh!  This is NOT "chocolate chip cookie dough", it is "Swedish cookie dough".  Do Swedish people eat more sugar cookies than chocolate chip?

Anyway, the ice cream was a very good texture straight from freezer, easily scoopable, which I appreciated, but is generally not a good sign (I find higher quality ice cream is usually firmer ...).  It was decently creamy, but did taste a touch "funny", something about the sweetness that wasn't quite right.  Still, decent enough base for the calorie savings, far better than any other light ice cream I've had.

The chocolate swirl was fairly minor, not a thick, dominant element like you find in Ben & Jerry's, but I liked having it.  The cookie dough hunks were standard size for ice cream, good for texture, and tasted fine.  They added sweetness too, but were otherwise plain.

Overall, this was all just fine.  Fairly unremarkable, except the slightly non-standard format of cookie dough that was sugar cookie based rather than chocolate chip.  But for 300 calories per PINT?  Yeah, totally a winner.

***.

Butter Pekan.

"Rich, mapley ice cream with bits of pecans."

Next, totally randomly, I picked Butter Pekan, somewhat inspired by my mother getting Maple Walnut the day before when we went out to ice cream.

The butter pecan had a lovely flavor to it.  Indeed, butter and pecan, both flavors pretty dominant.   But ... it did have that stevia-like taste on the finish.  Almost so very very good.

There were minimal bits of pecan, truly, "bits of pecans" as they say, not larger halves as is more common (and ... of course, a source of higher calories).

Again, overall, fine, and for the 300 calorie pint, great, but, it definitely does have a strange sweetness to it.

***.

Birthdäg Cake.

"Luscious cake batter ice cream filled with tons of rainbow sprinkles."

Well, huh.  I know I was impressed with the previous flavors, but this one, uh, takes the cake?  Tee-hee.

It is as good as any full fat cake batter-birthday cake-funfetti ice cream I've ever had.  Perfectly creamy, it melted beautifully.  Super sweet, but it should be to be a birthday cake flavor.  It tasted like cake and frosting.  It was basically ... a good version of what you'd expect from a funfetti, cake batter style ice cream.   It had no strange aftertaste, the sweetness didn't taste fake, just, nothing wrong with it, nothing to make you think it was a light style.  I was very impressed.

A wonderful choice when you want a sweet ice cream, and yes, it pairs perfectly with cake.

****. 

Mint Chokladchip.

"Cool minty ice cream mixed with flakes of chocolate."

The Mint Chokladchip was the first Nick's flavor to let me down.  It wasn't a total fail, but, I'm glad it wasn't the first flavor I tried, otherwise I would have likely never tried Nick's again.

On the positive side, the texture was great as always, it melted perfectly, and was quite creamy.  There is nothing in the consistency to give away that this is a light ice cream.  It was loaded with chocolate flakes, well distributed, assorted size bits, better than just standard chips.  They didn't skimp.  And it *did* taste minty.

The problem?  It had a fake sweetness to it, a slight medicinal quality to it.  Some of the other flavors had it too, but it was more minimal there.  I just couldn't get past it in this pint.  I think the mint somehow accented it?  Once I added hot fudge, bananas, whipped cream, and sprinkles, and a scoop of regular vanilla ice cream, I was able to balance out the flavor, but, it certainly took effort to enjoy it.

The first flavor I really don't recommend, and certainly wouldn't get again, although, yes, great consistency, awesome flakes.

**+.