Brigham’s Frozen Pudding Ice Cream

Sometimes it just happens… the notorious ice cream craving. It can hit at any time. At any place. For me, it’s usually after dinner — when I’m already in my lounging clothes (i.e. sweats) and snuggled into the recess of my couch. Or maybe during really bad weather, when no one in their right mind would go out on the roads. Or even worse… during the busiest grocery store day ever — Super Bowl Sunday.

I wanted ice cream. I needed ice cream. It was 5pm — and all the crazy people were at the grocery store stocking up for the Super Bowl and freaking out because they needed to get home before kickoff. I was one of them… fighting my way through the hoards of people, getting run down by the little old ladies with an agenda, getting shoved aside by the big brawny guys dragging five bags of ice and a case of guacamole around.

I pushed and squeezed my way through the crowd to the ice cream aisle. I was at Roche Brothers in West Roxbury… a store with a notoriously bad ice cream section (who only stocks 5 or 6 different flavors of Breyer’s???). I knew if I got a half gallon, that I would eat it all… so I started scanning the quart sizes and landed in front of the Brigham section.

A stock person was in the exact same place, loading the freezer up with replacement Brigham’s containers. People kept rushing by, knocking into me, getting annoyed with me… but I needed to figure out what flavor to get and I couldn’t really see because of the stock guy and his giant palate stocked high with ice cream.

The [very nice] stock guy asked me if I needed help. I told him I was just browsing… trying to figure out what flavor I was in the mood for. He thrust a container of Brigham’s Frozen Pudding flavor at me and asked if I had ever tried it. I looked at it with horror and was like “no… is it good”.

It looked like a Tutti Fruity type flavor, with chunks of artificially colored fruit it in it (like the kind you find in fruit cake). His response was that it is VERY good and only offered around the holidays… that it was a fluke that they still had some. He said it tasted like Rum Raisin, but with more fruit. I reluctantly took it from him and said “thanks”… to be honest, I felt guilty because he seemed to really love the flavor and I didn’t want to seem rude. That, and I was on my last nerve with regards to the crowds… so I looked at the container, decided it would not get eaten and checked out.

Obviously, I was super curious… so as soon as I got home I shoved a spoonful into my mouth. Hmm… not bad. Definitely tasted quite a bit like rum… which is never a bad thing.

I went back to Super Bowl gorging and saved the ice cream for later… when I was all gamed out and ready for a distraction. This time I loaded a bowl up and dug right in…

This ice cream is actually quite good. Much better than I expected. It’s interesting… it has chunks of candied cherries, candied pineapple and yellow raisins. The raisins are very plump and fully rehydrated from sitting in the ice cream… which causes a cool texture thing. Now I have to be honest, I don’t think I have ever had Rum Raisin ice cream, which is why this concoction didn’t sound good to me; however, I really enjoyed the combination of the rummy cream and the frozen raisins.

So why is it called frozen pudding? My first guess was that it was related to Christmas Pudding… especially since it is only served around the holidays. So I did a little researching and… most Christmas pudding is black and also has nuts in it. With a little more research, I found that “Frozen Pudding” is a pseudonym for Tutti Fruiti — the flavor that I was cautious about to begin with, and probably would not have purchased it if was aptly named. So the moral of the story is the same thing I always tell my 4-yo… “how do you know you won’t like it unless you try it??” Lesson learned.