The popular national Jeni’s Ice Creams’ brand released three spring flavors this year. I tried them all and quickly determined the best one.
Ice cream is — hands down — the best kind of dessert.
Sure, there’s a chocolate chess pie out there that I’m obsessed with and I welcome cakes of all kinds, and I’m an avowed fan of cookie pizza. But if I had to pick a type of dessert to have daily, it’d be ice cream. (Let’s be honest, this isn’t hypothetical.)
And while I generally gravitate towards local options (for me, that includes Andia’s Ice Cream), Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams is a clear frontrunner on the national scene. So when they reached out and offered to ship me their spring releases to try, I gladly accepted. Here’s what my super scientific research (read: deeply subjective but fiercely unfiltered opinion) found.
The New Spring Flavors
First, a quick rundown of our contestants is in order.
1. Citrus Glazed Pound Cake: “Yuzu ice cream with yellow pound cake and a lemon icing glaze. Bright, refreshing, made to share.”
2. Tropical Bloom: “Sun-kissed mandarin and sweet-tart kiwi with radiant passion fruit.”
3. Raspberry Rhubarb Delight: “A lively pink and sweet-tart raspberry-rhubarb jam ribboned through coriander sweet cream.”
Oh, and for good measure they threw in a few other pints, my favorite being the Goat Cheese with Red Cherries flavor. Who do I have to bribe to make this a year-round offering?!
The Obvious Winner — and Why
I’ll be honest: I love yuzu, but the flavor was too overpowering to me in the Citrus Glazed Pound Cake. I wanted it to be more subtle or stand alone without the cake. In short, this one felt like it was doing too much.
The Tropical Bloom, on the other hand, knows exactly who it is and isn’t afraid to scream it in your face. Remember those orange push pops that used to be a hallmark of your childhood summers? It would melt and run down your forearm before gathering at your elbow, and you didn’t care because someone else would be washing your laundry.
Tropical Bloom elicits the exact same flavor. Which is magical and memorable. And yet, it too, is also a smack in the face. Eat this outside in the blistering summer heat with your kids, and it may be exactly what you need. But I was looking for something else.
Which brings us to my clear favorite — Raspberry Rhubarb Delight. It’s perfectly balanced, delivering the sweetness you want without being overpowering or too heavy-handed. It’s creative and unique, pairing flavors that seem to belong together but that I can’t recall ever encountering. The finish is perfect, the flavors distributed, and maybe it’s the coriander sweet cream, but there’s just a little extra oomph in this one that makes it the kind of ice cream I’d reach for over and over.
And that’s the calling card of a top-tier ice cream — not a one-off joy or stunt, but something with staying power.
I’d go as far to say I liked it more than the Goat Cheese and Red Cherries, which is really saying something.
Thanks to Jeni’s Ice Creams for offering me these flavors to try! I was not compensated for this piece (other than the memorable spoonfuls) and didn’t promise coverage. But with a flavor as divine as the Raspberry Rhubarb, I knew I had to talk about it.
All photos courtesy of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams.