What's On My Plate This Week: Häagen-Dazs "five" Ice Cream

The bad news? My throat has been so sore the last few days, it has been impossible to eat anything warm or too "solid". The good news? It is a good, mostly guiltless excuse for me to have smoothies, milkshakes and ice cream and to try Häagen-Dazs new "five" line of ice cream. Häagen-Dazs says on their website that five is "all-natural ice cream crafted with only five ingredients for incredibly pure, balanced flavor... and surprisingly less fat!" I find the fact that it has just a few ingredients and not a bunch of strange things I cannot pronounce very appealing and since it was on sale, I picked up three pints to try Passion Fruit, Milk Chocolate and Brown Sugar. 

Passion Fruit lists its ingredients as milk, cream, eggs, sugar and passion fruit on the front of the carton. On the ingredients list it is a bit more specific: skim milk, cream eggs, passion fruit juice and egg yolks. The calories are 220 for 1/2 cup and the fat is 11g or 17%. The texture is smooth and creamy and the taste is good, the passion fruit flavor comes through and it it that combination of sweet and slightly tangy that passion fruit has. This is a great summery fruit flavor and my favorite out of the three. 

Milk Chocolate has milk, cream, sugar, eggs and cocoa on it's carton. The ingredient list is again, skim milk, cream, sugar, egg yolks and cocoa processed with alkali. (BTW: According to Wikipedia, "adding an alkali to cocoa produces Dutch process cocoa powder, which is less acidic, darker and more mellow in flavor than what is generally available in most of the world.") Again this flavor has a nice, smooth almost velvety texture and a mild, chocolaty flavor. The taste reminds me of drinking a glass of cold chocolate milk. It is a "childhood comfort" kind of flavor. It also lists 200 calories for 1/2 cup and has 12g of fat or 18%

Finally, Brown Sugar with its five ingredients being milk, cream, sugar, eggs and brown sugar. The detailed ingredients are skim milk, cream, brown sugar (molasses, sugar), egg yolks. (hey, isn't that 6 ingredients?). It has a caramel flavor, rich and sweet in that same smooth texture. It was rich enough, that I found it difficult to eat very much at a time (maybe that is a good thing) but I think it would be incredible served with a fruit pie or between two oatmeal cookies as an ice cream sandwich. 

Overall, five is good, although pretty basic, ice cream. The flavors really come through. It does have less calories and less fat than the regular flavors in the Häagen-Dazs line up, mainly due to the fact that skim milk is the base, rather than the cream that is the normal HD base. (Plus there are not any ribbons of caramel, chunks of chocolate or other things adding to the counts). I do like how it still has a rich taste and creamy mouth feel, even with less cream. Although I make ice cream more often than I buy it, I would try the other flavors (Coffee, Vanilla Bean, Ginger and Mint), and buy the Passion Fruit (my favorite) again, on sale of course! 

The throat is feeling better today so I will be cutting down on the ice cream meals, and getting back to my regularly scheduled healthier cooking and posting.

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