VL Praline Butter Cake, HD Pineapple Coconut, HD Passionfruit & Sweet Pear – great across the board!

Van Leeuwen Praline Butter Cake

• Sweet cream ice cream – A bold sweet cream flavor that has the yum factor of buttery taste and big vanilla. Similar to Haagen Dazs Vanilla (the original) and the type of old fashion vanilla of butter pecan ice creams.
• Praline – A lightly sweetened candied pecan. Had no idea what a praline was—honestly thought it was another type of nut. But no these are pecans. And a ton of them! Wow the most pecans I’ve had in a pint. Ben and Jerrys Pistachio Pistachio level of pecans. Actually possibly more. Lots of crunch here.
• Brown butter cake – Basically like a bread pudding cake in texture (soft, gel like) and taste. Honestly didn’t taste that much (like a a brown sugar bread pudding taste). More for its pleasant chewy texture than taste.

**Rating: 8.5/10. This is pretty much only a classic, traditional butter pecan ice cream with a bit of cake. But it does serve on a great tasting base and lots and lots of pecans. It is an overall pleasant, light taste. Not as heavy decadent as I was expecting. Even the nuts are more natural than glazed. If you want a nice, loaded, crunchy butter pecan ice cream without much any surprises, this is it.

Haagen Dazs Pineapple Coconut

• Sweet coconut ice cream – beautiful! A very nice, natural tasting coconut cream like coconut milk straight out the can. None of that fake artificial coconut that tastes like stevia. This coconut is rich, creamy, but also light and refreshing. It tastes like pina colada with a tiny bit of pineapple. Actually has rum listed in the ingredients notes (though I didn’t taste it).
• Pineapple pieces – small but a nice light crunch. A light pineapple taste.

**Rating: 8.5/10. I honestly thought this would taste more of pineapple. But it is mostly just a coconut flavor. However it is a good coconut flavor. Very authentic, like Helados Mexico Coconut bars (still my favorite) or Magnolia coconut ice cream (a Filipino brand). Like!

Haagen Dazs Passionfruit Fruit & Sweet Pear (Sorbet)

• Tropical passion fruit – this is your mellow, golden color (not green skin), ripe passion fruit. It tastes a lot like the passion fruit in POG juice (Passion orange guava) that’s popular in Hawaii, but better and more natural tasting than juice concentrate tasting. It’s not the super tart passion fruit I hoped for like Pitaya Passionfruit & Dragonfruit (amazing, almost sour, try it), but I expected that.
• Touch of sweet pear – honestly I totally get POG juice from this sorbet. Like a bit of orange and guava. Pear? Yeah I guess so too. It’s funny orange and guava isn’t in the ingredients because it is that taste to me
• Texture – Haagen Dazs does really nice sorbet. Not icy, just smooth, almost gelato like. It’s similar to Graeter’s sorbet.

**Rating: 8.5/10. If you ever got on an airplane to Hawaii you probably had POG juice. This sorbet is like the better version of that. To me it’s a nice tropical fruit medley based around passion fruit. Passionfruit might not be the star I wanted it to be. But this is a very pleasant tropical sunrise type of sorbet that is not as super sweet as I heard it would be. I find it to be well balanced though I probably would eat it in two sittings instead of one.

Which would I get?

All three are solid choices and share a similar level of sweetness and light refreshing taste. The same person would probably like all three. None are overpowering or over the top sweet.

Are any of these my new favorite? No, but I am pleasantly satisfied with each.

I did have different expectations for each of them and got something slightly different (Praline Butter Cake: more pecan than cake; Pineapple Coconut: more coconut than pineapple; Passionfruit & Sweet Pear: more POG than straight up Passionfruit). Still, I have no problem recommending each of these.

Other recommendations

• Haagen Dazs Vanilla & Aldi Specially Selected Vanilla – both are nice sweet cream flavors.
• Helados Mexico Coconut ice cream bar – amazing rich coconut flavor ice cream bar plus coconut shreds
• Pitaya Passionfruit & Dragonfruit – a “smoothie bowl” swirl of super tart/sour passion fruit (amazing, just like the slightly underripe green skinned fruit) plus bright pink dragonfruit (actually tasty!) and dragonfruit seeds (gives the passion fruit seedy experience).
• Frutero Passionfruit – a Passionfruit ice cream similar to the taste of passion fruit cheesecake at Cheesecake Factory. Great! Very dense