We Can’t Stop Eating McConnell’s New Honey & Cornbread Cookies Ice Cream
We’ve called McConnell’s Fine Ice Creams one of our top 10 favorite ice cream brands before, and with good reason—based in Santa Barbara, the company makes its batches completely from scratch, pasteurizing local milk and cream and using top-notch ingredients like marionberry preserves from the Willamette Valley and organic peppermint. You’ll find flavors on the official site ranging from Turkish coffee and Mint Chip to Whiskey & Pecan Pralines, all available to order online. And to celebrate their 70th anniversary, the McConnell’s team recently launched three new summer flavors—Honey & Cornbread Cookies, Wild Sweet Clover, and Olive Oil & Salted Almonds—which became available mid-June and will stick around through the end of summer.
The new ice creams looked so tantalizing that we knew we had to try them, and McConnell’s was kind enough to send us a few samples. First up was Wild Sweet Clover, which was lightly sweet with a distinctive, pleasantly spicy undertone, reminding me of the holidays. (Plus, according to McConnell’s, dairy cows love clover, so it’s about as authentic a flavor as you can get.) We then tried the Olive Oil & Salted Almonds, which was nutty with hints of vanilla and savory notes from the olive oil. Editors loved the crunch from the almonds, too. The real fan-favorite, however, was the Honey & Cornbread Cookies. One editor said it “absolutely delivers,” while another said it tastes like eating cornbread with honey butter (in a good way)—I found it to be sweet, buttery, and utterly different from anything I’d tried before. It uses wildflower honey from San Marco Farms in Santa Barbara, and you can taste that freshness.
“The quality of the dairy sings,” an editor said. “It’s the perfect amount of sweetness, and the perfect amount of texture with the cornbread.”
If you want to try these flavors out yourself, they’re available in McConnell’s scoop shops and for shipping nationwide—pints are $12. Or, if you’d rather make your own ice cream this summer, we have recipes for that too, like Guinness and Rosewater-and-Saffron. Check out all the recipes in our ice cream gallery.
