Gamer’s Gullet – Hostess Twinkies Ice Cream

Yellow and Thick

Browsing through my local grocer, my eye was drawn to colorful new packaging that seemed different but yet familiar.  Hostess has now entered the ice cream market by taking three of their unhealthy snack foods and converting them into a high sugar and saturated fat frozen dessert. Like a mirage in the desert, I could not believe that I was seeing Twinkies, Cupcakes, and Snoballs ice cream sitting on the store shelf.

The Limited Edition text displayed on the carton, my curiosity, and willingness to write stupid articles about food and post them on a video game-based website made me purchase a tub of the Twinkies version.  Honestly, I wanted to go with the Cup Cakes version but thought the Twinkies would make for a better article.  Either way, I was going to come up a loser having to put this stuff in my body. This 1.5-quart of fatty sugar cream cost me about $2.99, which is actually comparable price-wise to other frozen treats on the market.

While Hostess ice cream is a unique concept itself, perhaps the stand out feature is actually the story printed on the side of the carton.  It reads:

“In 1930, Hostess bakery manager Jimmy Dewar dreamed up Twinkies. At two for a nickel, the irresistibly sweet, cream-filled golden snack cake soon became our best-selling offering – and the rest, as they say, is history. Just when you thought the mighty Hostess Twinkie couldn’t get any better, we have come up with a scoopable ode to America’s favorite snack cake in all its golden glory. Bite-sized sponge cake pieces and sweet frosting are swirled together in rich, creamy butter cream ice cream. Delectably Twinkies.”

I think the important detail to take away from this anecdote is “butter cream ice cream.”  You see, Hostess Twinkie ice cream isn’t just ice cream, it is super thick ice cream.  Not to be confused with being hard, this frozen sugar milk is monstrously thick.  So thick in fact, you need to chew it, and not just because of the Twinkies bits mixed in.  No, the ice cream is super dense due to the butter cream aspect.  A refreshing summer treat this is not.  Instead, this is a sugar-induced meal designed to instantly clog your arteries and destroy your teeth, all in ice cream format.

The thickness of this ice cream is its defining factor.  However, the highlighter yellow color is so bright you will be able to use it as a flashlight if you get lost in the woods.  In contrast, vanilla ice cream is whiter, maybe with a slight grayish hue if vanilla beans are blended with it.  Not this. Nope. Yellow. Like banana yellow. Or, or specifically here in this case, Twinkie yellow (or “golden” as the Twinkie marketing team likes to call it).  Not going to lie, just kind of strange having yellow, thick-ass ice cream.

Unfortunately, if you look at the ingredients, Twinkies ice cream isn’t exactly what you would call organic. With several ingredients that are impossible to pronounce, I wonder if this Twinkies ice cream has a shelf life of infinity like its snack cake brethren.

Hostess Twinkies ice cream isn’t bad, you just need to be prepared for it.  You need to understand what you are getting yourself into before putting this into your mouth.  The thick butter cream ice cream is thick enough but then then Twinkies bits are blended with it which only adds to the “choke-it-down” chunkiness.  A light, refreshing summer treat this is not. This is “eat this to fatten yourself up for winter” kind of ice cream.

Not As Good As: a McFlurry
Also Try: chugging whole milk
Wait For It: Twizzlers Italian Ice

By: Zachary Gasiorowski, Editor in Chief myGamer.com
Twitter: @ZackGaz