A few weeks after Ben & Jerry’s founders indicated that marijuana-infused ice cream may one day join its product line, the company’s kosher-for-Passover charoset flavor has been generating buzz.
In case your memories of last year’s seder are blurred by too many cups of wine, charoset is the fruit-and-nut puree that symbolizes the mortar Hebrew slaves used when making bricks to construct Egyptian cities. In making its charoset flavor, which, sadly, is distributed only in Israel, Ben & Jerry’s opted for the Ashkenazi tradition of apples and walnuts, rather than the chunky Sephardic style featuring nuts blended with assorted dried fruits.
Ashkenazi charoset is great, but why stop at one Passover flavor? If we could have 10 plagues, why not 10 ice creams? Here’s some Passover flavors we’d like to see:
1) Sephardic Charoset: Think rum raisin, but with lots of spices and other dried fruits like dates and figs.
2) Manischewitz Madness: Sure, it’s not yet legal to put marijuana in the ice cream, but why not this potent and intensely sweet wine? We envision it as a sorbet with a kick that could replace the four cups of wine and double as a palate cleanser.
3) Chocolate-Covered Matzahs and Cream: Think cookies and cream, but crunchier and kosher for Passover.
4) Macaroons and Cream: Ice cream with chunks of macaroon, and the possibility of almost infinite sub-categories of flavors, mixing different types of macaroon with different types of ice cream.
5) Pure Macaroon: Forget the chunks of macaroon and instead just infuse the almond and coconut that form macaroons’ base into the ice cream itself.
6) Fruit Jellies Jamboree: The iconic gooey fruity candies mixed into vanilla ice cream or fruit sorbet offers a nice mix of textures.
7) Rocky Road out of Egypt: Wouldn’t those 40 years in the desert have been nicer with this confection of chocolate ice cream mixed with kosher marshmallows and nuts.
8) Red Sea: You won’t want to part with this red-velvet rich chocolate.
9) Tzimmes: Sweet potato base with chunks of dried fruit. If you don’t think a tuber can go in ice cream, remember this: pumpkin pie is an accepted ice-cream flavor and sweet potato pie tastes a little like pumpkin pie, so why not?
10) Dayenu: All (or maybe just some) of the above flavors combined into one more-than-satisfying flavor.
Incidentally Ben & Jerry’s, Passover is not the only Jewish holiday. When you finish with the Pesach line, we’re hoping to see some Rosh Hashanah (apples-and-honey), Hanukkah (jelly doughnuts and/or gelt, anyone?) and Shavuot (cheesecake) confections.
