Connoisseur Caramel Honey Macadamia

Let me just start off by saying, I am a huge fan of the Connoisseur brand of ice creams. Before I even had the idea to start this blog, I'd consumed copious amounts of it over the years. I love the stuff. I've tried nearly every flavour and I'll have reviews of them all up eventually, but today I'm going to start with Caramel Honey Macadamia.

Sounds pretty enticing, doesn't it? I love the descriptions and background to the flavour they give on the back of the containers. This one is described as "honey roasted macadamias smothered in smooth caramel flavoured ice cream and honey sauce". 

It's a nice, smooth, buttery-looking caramel ice cream and if you look reeeally hard, you can see the macadamias...

There's a better view!

Okay. I really love this ice cream. It's rich and smooth just like Connoisseur always is. It has a sweet, slightly mild caramel flavour. I would enjoy just this caramel base flavour all by itself, but the macadamias really steal the show. They're delicious! They're covered in honey and have a nice, roasted flavour. The honey is strong, but not overpowering. There's just enough of the macadamia halves and pieces that you may not get them on every spoonful - but it's fun hunting for them so I don't mind!

This ice cream is definitely going into my "buy again" list. Connoisseur did an excellent job with this.

Coles Swirl Raspberry and Vanilla

Just a quick review. Had a small taste of this last night (as it's my mother's, not mine, so I had to be sneaky).

For a supermarket brand, this was really good ice cream and sorbet! The vanilla was creamy, melt-in-your-mouth and sweet. The raspberry sorbet was tangy and delicious. I enjoyed this a lot, and I might have to buy this for myself! I'm going to check out the other Coles store brand ice creams in future now too.

Harry's Ice Cream Co - Banana Caramel Swirl

The container of Banana Caramel Swirl proclaims, "with ripened Cavendish bananas", which made me excited thinking that there'd be pieces of real banana in this ice cream. Sadly, that wasn't the case, however the ice cream does have a strong banana taste. It's obvious that real bananas were used to give this ice cream it's flavour, which is definitely a good thing.

However, I thought the banana taste was too overpowering at times. Especially when compared to the caramel swirl, which I think there just was not enough of. The little pocket of caramel at the top of the picture was so far the only swirl I found.

I guess I had high expectations for this flavour after how good the lamington was, but it just isn't that great. The taste of real bananas is the only plus to this ice cream. I also think it needs more caramel. I'll finish this container eventually, sure, but I doubt I'll buy this again.

Harry's Ice Cream Co. - Lamington

Harry's Ice Cream Co is a new premium ice cream brand to hit the shelves of Woolworths, with three unique flavours released in September 2012 - Pavlova, Lamington, and Banana Caramel Swirl.

I went out today and picked up all three, and I couldn't resist reviewing the lamington for my first post. I was really interested in how it would turn out. The lamington is such an iconic Australian food and one of my favourite desserts as well. The container proclaims, "with chocolate, strawberry and coconut", which sounds about right - the lamingtons I've eaten have all consisted of the typical sponge cake fingers or cubes, dipped in chocolate icing and rolled in coconut, sometimes with cream in the middle - but I've never seen strawberry incorporated! 

Well, this looks pretty good! My first spoonful was of just the ice cream. I was immediately hit by a strong coconut flavour, but it wasn't unpleasant at all and just what you'd expect from a lamington flavoured ice cream. There's tiny bits of dessicated coconut in there too, which is a nice surprise!

The chocolate swirl was amazing too - dense and rich and tastes just like chocolate lamington icing.

I didn't get to any strawberries until much further down, and they were pretty tiny. I didn't taste them much unless I was really concentrating on them. I thought they'd be odd in a lamington flavoured ice cream, but they work nicely enough.

Texture-wise, well... though it's no fault of the ice cream itself (probably from either the supermarket freezer or the ride home) half was icy, like it had melted and been refrozen at one point. The other half was smooth and creamy and just like a premium ice cream should be. Weird how only half the container was affected, but whatever.

I really loved this ice cream. I found it hard to stop eating it. I expected I would though as I love lamingtons!

I'd give this a solid 9/10. The only reason it lost a point, in my opinion, is I think it could have done with some pieces of sponge cake instead of the strawberries! That, however, is my only complaint. This is excellent ice cream and tastes just like it's namesake.