My local grocery store has started stocking a "limited edition" apple pie ice cream (message me for the details, don't want to be shilling). It's one of my favorites -- not only does it have chunks of real apple and graham cracker crust, but the ice cream itself has a delicious apple flavor. The whole thing tastes like you took a slice of apple pie with vanilla ice cream and blended it chunky style.
I always figured there was some boring food-science reason you couldn't make a decent apple ice cream, but this shows it's perfectly possible. So why isn't it more common? Apple pie is one of the most popular deserts, and you find apple flavoring in plenty of drinks and candies. What gives?
Orange creamcicle flavored ice cream is pretty easy to find. But I think it's usually vanilla ice cream with layers of orange sherbet. Strawberries are acidic and strawberry ice cream is a popular flavor.
In my experience, apples just don't taste very good when frozen. Maybe that's why they don't sell frozen apples at most supermarkets?
Why isn't orange (the fruit) ice cream more popular? I don't mean sherbet, I mean ice cream. It can be bought in Florida, but I've never heard of it anywhere else.
I feel silly asking since you mentioned Florida, but do they use real oranges? Any time I've ever seen or tasted orange ice cream it was always that fake stuff.
Corporate studies show that the most popular ice cream flavors are the flavors we've always made and new flavors are risky because we don't know how popular they will be and so we only do the same flavors so we're always right.
Same reason why you only get reboots and remakes, it's a safer bet for investment.
I'm not really into sweets, but one day i saw a bar of chocolate with grapes on it, and i was like: chocolate with pockets full of grapes? Ymmi.
At home i unpacked it and stuffed it in my mouth.
I almost threw up because it wasn't grapes, it was grappa. Of course we can't have nice things, we have to waste grapes on rotten ugly juice.
While that is the case, modern industrial ice cream rarely contains the actual fruit. Just take standard Neutro mix, regenerate it with water, not milk, and add some food coloring (a light green), an acidic component like citric acid, and "natural" "apple" flavor.
It's a popular flavor in new england. Gifford's has apple pie seasonally at their ice cream stands. They also have pumpkin pie ice cream which is my favorite.
Little boutique place near us has an "Apple Cheddar Pie" ice cream in the fall. It's never quite as good as you expect. Gotta try it again this year, to see how they've changed it.
(On the other hand, their Lemon Curd Blueberry is one of the greatest things ever served in a cone in the history of humankind.)
I really wish I had one of those fancy ice cream makers like they have on cooking shows like Iron Chef because I would definitely see what happens if you tried to make apple ice cream. I don't know if I can get fancier than just basic ingredients with mine... Maybe if I made an apple compote? 🤔
I think it just works better making apple pie ala mode ice cream Cold Stone style with some vanilla ice cream, pie filling, graham cracker crust and caramel.
Do you have a KitchenAid stand mixer or anything like that? Best thing I ever learned is making ice cream with dry ice. I just put the base in the mixer, start it with the paddle, and start putting in crushed up dry ice, one spoonful at a time. I managed to get dry ice in the little cubes or pellets, put it in a cloth sack, and then use a hammer or blunt object to break it up into small pieces.
It's probably not as common because other flavors are significantly more popular. Chocolate, vanilla, and berry flavors are staple flavors. There's only so much milk, production capacity, and retail shelf space to go around.
I've noticed, though, local ice cream shops are usually more willing to take a risk worth novelty flavors.
Pure speculation on my part, but it's probably a safe guess to assume some market studies and/or trial runs they did on the flavor showed it wouldn't make enough profit. It's always about the money. I'm sure many people would buy it and enjoy it, but we are talking about corporations run by people with expensive college degrees in min-maxing everything for profit.
That's a bummer. I have noticed products like that will often vanish. Or drop dramatically in quality when they swap out quality ingredients for cheaper ones.
Jesus. So you expect companies to produce products that lose money?!
Or, do you expect them to remove more profitable products, which by definition are widely loved, from the limited shelf space and replace them with less profitable products, which by definition, fewer people enjoy? You'd fail running a lemonade stand.
Maybe, but you definitely see more niche flavors like pistachio, coffee, mango, pineapple-coconut, rum raisin, etc. Hard to believe apple would be less popular, unless it's more expensive to make for some reason.
Maybe it's less popular because so many people buy ice cream to eat with actual apple pie, or some other kind of pie which might taste weird with apple pie flavors.
I'm not sure if I'd personally like apple that much. I like apples and the flavor is refreshing and good, but I just don't think it'd fit ice cream of all things. Though, if I had one, I wouldn't be opposed to trying it and I'd rather try apple flavor than something gross lol