Talenti - Sea Salt Caramel

   As promised, here is the second of my Talenti flavor reviews, albeit delayed.

   Sea Salt. That is what caught my eye with this one. It is a BIG thing these days if you use sea salt in anything, even more so if you use it in a dessert. But wait. Salt in something sweet? Yes. Adding a touch of salt, especially high quality salt like sea salt, will enhance the natural sweetness of the dessert. If you say 'Made with sea salt' on your ice cream description, page, label, whatever, then people will flock to it "like the salmon of Capestrano".

   As with the previous Talenti flavor, this one was exceptionally smooth. I have never had a store-bought ice cream (gelato) with this kind of quality and texture. Cuts like butter. (I have to test that guar gum out for myself to see if it will work for me)

   The caramel base was a bit like sticking your nose into an oven that has charred food droppings lying in the bottom. It tasted like burnt caramel. That should be saved for the creme brulees of the dessert world. Yuck. Now, this ice cream was not quite that bad, but it did have hints of smoke. But you might ask, 'That's what caramel is, isn't it? Burnt stuff." No. It is burnt sugar, but you can burn caramel too. This is done by allowing the sugar to burn, making an amber caramel; then letting that caramel sit in the pan even longer until it too becomes burnt and a deeper brown color. That is when the taste becomes drastically different.
   The salt did add a great flavor to the caramel though. It was the saving grace. I am a huge fan of adding salt into my ice creams whenever I can. I think ice creams today are far too sweet, so I counter balance all mine with a touch of salt (a little more than a touch in my flavor 'Roasted Honey Nut'). The initial notes are of sweet, and partially burnt, caramel, but then the saltiness flows in like the great flood of Noah's day. Salt is where it is at.

   Ok. I thought the ice cream stopped there. No, sir. Unlabeled and unseen, these dark squares appear in my scoop. I checked the label again. 'Sea Salt Caramel'. Alright, then what is this?

   That, my friend, is a chocolate truffle. Very tasty little devils, I might add. They too had a touch of sea salt, and it worked marvelously with the dark chocolate. Sweet and salty: the greatest combo since peanuts and butter...
   Peanut butter.
   What I mean is, they were good. But only by themselves. The flavors clashed horrifically. The flavor of the salty caramel was powerful and potent. The salty chocolate truffles were equally powerful, though on a smaller scale. This gave rise to a epic war inside the mouth. A battle for top taste. As a result, I was the one wounded, and confused about which taste I wanted. I had no other choice than to take them together, which led to a re-battle!
   The caramel should have been the only thing in there. There was no need for them to add those chocolate truffle squares. That pushed this flavor over the top, and flew me over the cuckoo's nest.

 

  So, naturally, I crushed up some Oreo cookies for a little more action (expelling the white stuff). Talenti gelato is so incredibly smooth that is became obnoxious. I had to do something to balance it. CRUNCH. Ice creams are made to have crunchiness in them. Oreos are perfectly crunchy. Caramel and Oreo? Yeah, much better.

Thanks for reading. I now have another Talenti flavor in the freezer, so watch out for it.

-Reese O'Shirey, Esq.

P.S. Can anyone name the movie I quoted at the end of the first real paragraph?