According to a website on Finnish cuisine, ice cream dominates the dessert list. “Ice cream has maintained its place as the queen of desserts for a couple of centuries now, although tastes have changed. A hundred years ago, people favoured ice cream flavoured with fresh pineapple, almonds, chestnuts and other nuts. Ice cream with foreign canned fruits and chocolate sauce was regarded as a delicacy in the 1950s. In the present century, wild strawberry ice cream with a garnish of puréed wild strawberries is typically served as a dessert at lunch.” – http://finland.fi/
For me though, I wanted to try some flavours that I couldn’t try at home…
At the S-Market near our hotel in Helsinki, there was a huge frozen section dedicated to ice cream. There were wire bins upon bins of individual frozen novelties available – so much space that this couldn’t possibly be a seasonal section as far as I could tell, and it was near the front of the store – a popular treat for sure!
It was a hot day, and we didn’t have much for dinner, so we picked out two treats each (ok.. and we love ice cream!) We each selected one of the Magnum treats (mint for me, an unphotographed plain one for my travel companion – who was already eating by the time I got my camera out!). My companion chose a toffee one for the second treat, while I went for the Ingman Lakritsi cone instead…
Of the four treats we had that night, the Lakritsi was the best! My companion had to snag a bite too of course!
So good!
The Lakritsi had licorice sprinkles on top of plain ice cream with a licorice core. The Magnum Mint wasn’t so good for me – it was plain vanilla ice cream, and only the chocolate coating had the mint – with tiny mint candies in the chocolate coating. It was crunchy instead of the smooth texture I prefer.
Once we’d tried one licorice ice cream though, we were keen to try another, and this is where it got really good – Salmiakki ice cream. This is a licorice ice cream with a licorice-flavoured coating. I wish we could get these here… I’ll definitely have to keep my eyes open when I get to specialty shops…
As we were leaving Finland, heading to Toronto on FinnAir, to spend the night before returning to Calgary, I went on the hunt for another ice cream treat. I was looking for the Salmiakki ice cream we’d tried before, but the little convenience store in the airport didn’t have it. Instead I picked up this Lakupala bar – which had the same licorice-flavoured coating, but inside was chocolate ice cream. It was good, but not nearly as good as the Salmiakki ice cream bar!