Ryan Gosling and a puppet alien blew away expectations and soared to one of the best debuts for a non-sequel/non-franchise film in over a decade with an $80.6M weekend.
When my siblings and I were kids, one of the restaurants in our rotation for a special occasion was TGI Fridays. This was a long, long time before the chain launched endless apps (and even longer before most of its locations closed), but if you were a kid eating at TGI Fridays back then, you already had something special to look forward to: Worms in Dirt.
At the end of a visit, a TGI Fridays kids meal closed out with a cup of chocolate pudding covered in crushed Oreo cookies. Hiding inside that cup of pudding were a handful of gummi worms. To paraphrase Bandit Heeler, it was the 90s, man.
Of course, TGI Fridays didn’t invent the concept of mixing chocolate pudding, crushed cookies and gummi worms together. I went to at least one birthday where that combo appeared as dirt cake, serving what TGI Fridays had turned into a single-serving dessert as a treat big enough for an entire party to dig into.
And now you can enjoy the magic of dirt cake in ice cream form.
Hudsonville has just introduced Dirt Cake Ice Cream, partnering with Albanese to release “a vanilla and chocolate pudding flavored ice cream with cream-filled chocolate cookies.” The gummi worms in Dirt Cake Ice Cream aren’t just any normal gummi worms, though. They’re gummi worms designed to stay chewy despite living in the freezer.
“We are always focused on making the best food for people to enjoy and that starts with anticipating what consumers will want long before they ask for it,” Bethany Albanese, co-president of Albanese Confectionery, said. “We pioneered our chiller technology back in 2010 to create a gummi that holds its flavor and texture in ice cream, setting the stage for experiences like this.”
Dirt Cake Ice Cream isn’t the only ice cream flavor from Hudsonville that evokes other fun desserts. Brownie Sundae Ice Cream is hitting coolers alongside Dirt Cake, and Birthday Cake Ice Cream kicked things off in January.
I love ice cream. And I love all those desserts. So I couldn’t wait to try this new trio of fun Hudsonville flavors.
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What they cost
I don’t have specific pricing for this trio of flavors, but I’d imagine they cost the same as Hudsonville’s other flavors of ice cream. (Like this fun-looking Super Scoop flavor that you can get on Walmart’s website for $4.24.)
My thoughts
I’m a sucker for an ice cream flavor that goes beyond the standard flavors. I collected and consumed all the Milk Bar pints when they were introduced. (They’re discontinued now, and I miss Chocolate Birthday Cake.) I’ve long hoped that Ben & Jerry’s will bring back Fossil Fuel.
Getting to dive into three ice cream flavors packed full of cookies, candy, brownies and cake? That’s the dream.
Hudsonville Dirt Cake Ice Cream
Dirt Cake Ice Cream is the flavor that caught my attention when it came to Hudsonville’s new lineup. The promise of gummi worms in my ice cream would’ve been enough to send me on the hunt for this flavor. But the discovery that these were Albanese gummi worms specifically designed to “actually stay chewy” took this flavor to another level.
“We’ve been perfecting our recipes for 100 years, and this collaboration with Albanese gives us the chance to recreate a dessert people already love in a way that’s never been done before, with chewy gummi worms swirled right into the ice cream,” Joel Ancrile, brand lead for Hudsonville Ice Cream, said.
Dirt Cake Ice Cream has everything you love about, well, dirt cake. Vanilla and chocolate pudding ice cream. Crushed cream-filled chocolate cookies. And surprisingly tiny gummi worms.
Each spoonful of Dirt Cake Ice Cream has a slightly fruity brightness to it thanks to those gummi worms. I assume the gummi worms are smaller than what you’d normally find in a dirt cake as part of the science that went into making sure they didn’t get hard while buried in ice cream. If you’ve ever had ice cream with gummi candy in it (I’m looking at you, Friendly’s Candy Shoppe Sundae), you know how difficult it can be to bite into those gummi bits once they’re cold.
Albanese solved that problem, and Hudsonville’s Dirt Cake Ice Cream is the perfect way to enjoy those Gummi Chiller Worms.
Who doesn’t love the combo of brownies and ice cream? Whether it’s a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top of a warm brownie or a few chunks of chewy, chocolatey goodness mixed into a bowl of ice cream, the duo is a classic.
Hudsonville found a way to elevate that duo, adding rainbow sprinkles to a vanilla ice cream base in addition to brownie chunks and fudge swirl. The sprinkles bring not only a pop of color to the ice cream but also some added crunch.
Hudsonville introduced the Birthday Cake Ice Cream flavor earlier this year in honor of the company’s 100th birthday. (“Eating ice cream is an important job,” the company notes.) If I make it to 100, I hope I can celebrate with an ice cream flavor as fun as this one.
Like with Brownie Sundae Ice Cream, Birthday Cake Ice Cream puts a classic combo (birthday cake and ice cream, obviously) into a single scoop. The ice cream is flavored like white cake batter and is bursting with pound cake pieces, rainbow sprinkles and a blue frosting swirl.
This isn’t the first time an ice cream company has crafted a birthday cake flavor, but this one is definitely one of my favorites. How can you not love that blue frosting swirl?
Hudsonville Dirt Cake Ice Cream, Hudsonville Birthday Cake Ice Cream and Hudsonville Brownie Sundae Ice Cream were provided to Snackology for this independent review.
Snackology is a publication of The Omnicosm.
Issue No. 189
Snackology is written and produced by Bill Kuchman. Copyediting by Tim Kuchman.
The Omnicosm founder. Snackology, Popculturology and The Cold Open writer. A Rochester, N.Y., native now living in the Washington, D.C., area. Won’t pass up a Genny Cream Ale.
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