Senior foodies sample ice cream at Maven’s Creamery

November 13, 2017 — by Michelle Lee and Katherine Zhou

Lee and Zhou try delicious ice cream between crunchy macaroons

If you’re an avid foodie like us, you’re most likely familiar with Insider Food videos on Facebook. We spend hours browsing these pages, craving the mouth-watering combinations the videos show. We wanted to see if these foods really taste as good as they look.

It was extremely difficult to find any restaurants near us. Insider Food mostly profiles food spots in metropolitan areas like San Francisco. Luckily, though, we found one spot, Maven’s Creamery, that has locations in San Jose. The video showcased machine-made macaron ice cream sandwiches looked uniformly delicious with crunchy thin cookies and creamy ribboning ice cream.

After a long day in class on a Monday, we were excited to eat some ice cream. Stuck in traffic on Highway 85, we felt our stomachs rumble as we anticipated what flavors we were going to get. Chocolate? Hazelnut? We contemplated how we would spend our $4.95 — the retail price for one large sandwich cookie.

As we arrived at Maven’s Creamery, we were surprised to see industrial buildings, construction workers and run-down structures that had graffiti on them nearby. This scenery was not social media-worthy.

As we walked toward the building, we realized that we had the wrong address and had accidentally driven to the factory. Apparently, Maven’s Creamery ice cream sandwiches are only sold in stores at retail like Safeway, Whole Foods or Poki Bowl.

Luckily, we were still able to obtain the ice cream sandwiches from the factory. We sampled five different flavors: Chocolate Toasted Almonds, Earl Grey Lavender, Salted Caramel, Coffee Hazelnut, Cookies ‘n Cream and Strawberry Shortcake.

The most unusual flavor we tried was the Earl Grey Lavender. It was surprising how accurately the sandwich captured the Earl Grey flavor, but Michelle said she also tasted strong, almost spicy lavender.

It’s easy to see why the company’s best-selling flavor is Cookies ‘N Cream, for it was extremely decadent and had an interesting blue colored cookie. Katherine’s favorite flavor was the Chocolate Toasted Almonds, as it had a delicious crunch and really rich chocolate while Michelle’s favorite flavor was the Salted Caramel for its interesting salty and sweet contrast and unique flavor.

Though the sandwiches are pricey, they reasonably compare to prices offered by other ice cream sandwiches. Competitors like CREAM offer much larger ice cream sandwiches for around the same price of $5. The macaron cookie base is a unique touch that separates this dessert from the rest, but also makes the sandwich break apart easily, turning soggy as it absorbs melted ice cream.

The bottom line: The company’s ice cream sandwiches were just as delicious as we expected, but we wouldn’t go out of our way to purchase them again. At the same time, we would buy them again if we found them in a store.

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