Kotas Reviews Mayfield Peppermint Stick Ice Cream

Ah, the holidays have passed, our gift collections have swollen, and it's time to try some new (or not so new) things before the New Year is upon us. Christmas may be over, but there's still a plethora of holiday themed things to sink our teeth into, so let's look at today's subject: Peppermint Stick Ice Cream!

Skiing. Nothing more than...skiing.

Mayfield tends to put out simple ice creams that are a flavor done very well, or complicated jumbles that throw everything but the kitchen sink in and yet still somehow stay coherent in flavor. Today's subject tries to be both of these things together, just in time for the season. I rather like the packaging, though it departs from the traditional Mayfield yellow, because how often are you going to see an image of a cow skiing with peppermint candy canes? Not very often in my experience. Let's rip the top off and see what we can see.

The phrase you are looking for is "underwhelming".

Okay, so it isn't very exciting to look at. Just white ice cream with flecks of green and red peppermint candy in it. It's somewhat festive, but I was hoping for a bolder statement. Still, something visually pedestrian can conceal a powerhouse of flavor. Unfortunately for this ice cream, that is not the case. When I have had peppermint ice cream in the past, it tends to be a pink ice cream with a very strong peppermint flavor. Sometimes that flavor would be too strong, but here? There isn't much flavor AT ALL outside of the peppermint candy bits. This might be okay if the candy was fairly evenly distributed, but it is not. The chunks tend to be pretty large and while the color of them is common, the actual bits themselves are pretty clustered together, with a whole lot of nothing in between. That ice cream is best described as sweet, cold, and flavorless. It's not even "vanilla with a hint of peppermint", it's just "nothing with the occasional peppermint bit". The candy bits aren't even very good candy bits, as a final insult.

On the FACE Rating System, this ice cream gets 2 frownys. I expect a lot from a Mayfield ice cream, and usually even flavors I don't like are at least well crafted. This? This is a lazy seasonal effort that attempts to be "different" from the normal peppermint ice cream, and falls completely flat. If you simply MUST have Mayfield peppermint ice cream, I guess you only have this as a choice, but for everyone else, avoid.