Contents
Brand
Flavor
Huckleberry Chip
Rating
6 of 10
Review
North Cascade Huckleberry Base: A pink, mildly fruit-flavored base. Refreshing and summery, but not very sweet or rich or creamy. I can’t tell if the flavor is indeed huckleberry—I’ve never tasted a huckleberry before. It’s a mild, indistinct flavor. Googling “huckleberry taste”, I learn that blue huckleberries tend to be sweet while red huckleberries are tart. The pink base suggests red huckleberries were used, but I’m not getting any tart flavor notes, only a gentle sweetness. The base is somewhat icy on first taste, before it tempers, perhaps from the inclusion of huckleberries. Any ice cream maker that includes fruit or berries in a base must address this problem: water in the fruit or berries tends to make the ice cream icy—unpleasantly so. Ice is the enemy of premium ice cream; it dilutes flavor, prevents creaminess, and may even add an unpleasant crunch. Full Tilt has not fully solved the ice problem here; it’s not crunchy with ice, but straight from the freezer the taste of ice overwhelms any flavor. This pint might be improved by—prior to inclusion—boiling the huckleberries down with some sugar or honey, or making them into a jam or preserves swirl. This would help to concentrate the unique huckleberry flavor, evaporate water or bind water to sugar, and prevent, or at least reduce, ice formation.
Dark Chocolate Chips: Not the standard chocolate chip from a cookie. Instead, thin, crispy, irregularly-shaped dark chocolate flakes, reminiscent of the chocolate in stracciatella. A quality dark chocolate that doesn’t melt in your mouth immediately—adding some crunch if you don’t pause to savor and let it melt. Most of the chocolate flakes are small to medium size; no crazy ginormous Graeter’s-style chunks.
Overall: Full Tilt Huckleberry Chip is a refreshing, summery, gently fruit-flavored huckleberry base with fine, chocolate flakes. Its flavor profile—berries and chocolate—reminds me of Graeter’s Black Cherry Chocolate Chip, Graeter’s Black Raspberry Chocolate Chip, and Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia. But Full Tilt’s pint doesn’t really hold its own against these competitors. It suffers from iciness—the bane of any fruit or berry based pint. It lacks a distinctive base flavor, neither tart nor sweet. And it’s not very creamy or rich, not when held up against the standards set by Graeter’s and B&J. A premium brand like Full Tilt priced over $6 per pint needs to at least meet its peers in quality if it hopes to survive on the freezer shelf. 6 of 10.
Home Delivery
Not Available
Front blurb
Huckleberry Chip
North Cascade Huckleberry with dark chocolate chips
Back blurb
Full Tilt ice cream is all about fun and community. We use local and fresh ingredients, and we make all of our ice cream by hand in the same way we did it when it all started. Come down and see for yourself.
Calories
- 4.5 servings per container
- Serving size: 4.5 grams (100 g)
- Calories per serving: 220
- Calories per container: 990
Ingredients
Cream, Milk, Sugar, Skim Milk Powder, Huckleberries, Chocolate Chips, Vanilla, Carob Bean Gum, Corn Syrup Solids, Soy Lecithin, Glycol, Alcohol, Natural Flavoring.
Purchase Location
PCC Community Markets.
Price
$6.39
Books
Need to know how Full Tilt does it? Well, you’ll have to figure it out on your own. Full Tilt hasn’t put out a recipe book yet! Come on, Full Tilt! What’s the deal? We love you and want to get to know you better—to know all your little ice cream quirks and secrets. Publish that ice cream recipe book already!
Related
Psst! You can make ice cream like Ben & Jerry’s, Jeni’s, and Haagen-Dazs at home. Here’s their secret ice cream base recipes!
Read all our Full Tilt pint reviews.
Read all our other pint reviews.
Last Updated on September 3, 2022 by Ice Cream Admin
