Perhaps it is largely nostalgia that makes this flavor so compelling to me. The internet, including the New York Times’s Cooking section, is replete with recipes for transforming tangy goat cheese into soft, decadent ice cream. In the Philippines, cheddar cheese is such a popular ice cream flavor that it is mass-produced and sold in grocery stores and scoop shops. Ice creams made with queso fresco - or helado de queso - are common in Mexico and in Mexican snack shops across my home state of Texas, often garnished with fresh fruit. While this concept may seem totally bizarre, it’s not exactly uncommon in the United States and beyond. The only thing that’s absent is the noodles, and they are absolutely not missed. Salty-sweet is an unbeatable flavor combination, and that’s exactly what’s going on here. Macaroni and cheese is already made with milk and cream, and many recipes for the dish call for a little bit of sugar - a tablespoon or so - to balance out all that tangy dairy. The seemingly weird combination of cheese powder and ice cream works because its ingredients are really not all that different from what you’d typically pair Kraft’s cheese powder with. It’s one of those foods that’s so uniquely compelling that you’re going to be confused while eating it, but definitely won’t want to stop. It’s lightly funky, and more complex than the classic blue-box dinner. It doesn’t exactly evoke a bowl of macaroni and cheese in terms of texture, thankfully, but the flavor is strikingly similar. The cheese powder combines with Van Leeuwen’s rich base, made with milk, cream, and sugar, to produce a buttery flavor that’s only slightly cheesy. Half of the pint had disappeared by the time I looked up, and I have no regrets. Upon taking the first bite, I was hooked. It doesn’t boast a particularly cheesy smell, and blessedly, there aren’t any little bits of noodles scattered throughout to really mimic a chilly version of this childhood classic. The cheese powder - with a little help from turmeric, according to the ingredient list - makes a scoop of the ice cream look near-identical to the sauce that coats the noodles in a classic Kraft dinner, with a bright orange color that is sort of reminiscent of sherbert left by a nuclear testing site for too long. Upon cracking open the first pint, which was shipped to my door shrouded in dry ice to protect from the blistering Texas heat, the flavor’s inspiration was immediately evident. And however skeptical you may be about the pairing of macaroni and cheese and ice cream, I regret to inform you that this unhinged mashup is actually delicious. In collaboration with Kraft, the makers of the famed blue box that fueled many of our childhoods, the upscale ice cream shop, known for decadent French ice creams like Royal Wedding (elderflower and lemon) and its most famous Earl Grey, will debut a new flavor made with the cheese powder that gives Kraft’s macaroni and cheese its signature neon-orange color on July 13. This, however, is not the case with New York creamery Van Leeuwen’s new macaroni-and-cheese flavor, which is nothing short of magical. The products purpose is less for eating and more for Twitter gags and outrage, which is often how the brands intentionally designed them. While the idea of candy-flavored cheese or ice cream infused with the flavors of an everything bagel might be compelling to some, most people are so put off by the concept of such a bizarre combination that the idea of eating something that weird is off the table. Most of the time, gimmicky food mashups are the definition of disappointing.
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