Guilty pleasures. We all have them, and they often take center stage during the holidays.
Salt & Straw ice cream and Sprinkles cupcakes – both in Newport Beach – have created decadent desserts to make sure our guilty pleasures are fulfilled this holiday season.
Salt & Straw
Salt & Straw is renowned for concocting unusual flavors packed into a scoop of ice cream. Their Thanksgiving series, crafted by head ice cream maker and co-founder Tyler Malek, may be the most unusual yet.
The Thanksgiving Series essentially takes customers through a five-course Thanksgiving feast, reimagining the holiday’s most beloved flavors as uniquely craveable ice creams.
Flavors in The Thanksgiving Series include:
- Parker House Rolls with Salted Buttercream: Flaky, buttered rolls are finished with a sprinkle of sea salt, then folded into a sweet-and-salty butter ice cream.
- Turkey Stuffing and Cranberry Sauce: Herbed, brioche bread pudding with turkey sausage are stirred into a salt-and-pepper ice cream and streaked with tart cranberry jam.
- Maple Koginut Squash with Pomegranate: Maple sage ice cream infused with roasted Koginut squash from acclaimed chef Dan Barber’s seed-to-table company Row 7, rippled with pomegranate jelly and finished with a buttery cracker-hazelnut crumble.
- Pumpkin Pie Tiramisu: Melding the two iconic desserts, pumpkin pie coffee ice cream is ribboned with tiramisu cake swirl and finished with chocolate stracciatella
- Cranberry Orange Sorbet: A juicy sorbet ‘sauce’ made with orange zest and fresh Pacific Northwest cranberries from Oregon’s Stahlbush Farms.
The challenge with the Thanksgiving Series is which flavors to order? I solved that dilemma with their Flight options: four small scoops of your choice of flavors in a four-compartment container. I opted for the first four flavors of the Thanksgiving Series, leaving out the Cranberry Orange Sorbet.
One by one I sampled each flavor as I might at the dinner table, starting with the Parker House Rolls with Salted Buttercream. The small bits of rolls nicely offset the sweet buttercream.
Next was the Turkey Stuffing and Cranberry Sauce. The combination of the savory sausage and bread pudding was offset by the ice cream and jam. This was my favorite flavor and I easily finished the scoop before moving on to the Maple Squash with Pomegranate. Again, the combination of sweet and savory made my tastebuds happy.
I finished with the Pumpkin Pie Tiramisu. A perfectly sweet ending to a sweet Thanksgiving menu.
The Thanksgiving series is available through Thanksgiving, although they usually have the seasonal flavors through the end of the month. The Newport Beach location is at 2001 Westcliff Dr. near Olea Restaurant. Visit https://saltandstraw.com.
Sprinkles
Sprinkles cupcakes is spreading cheer with the Sprinkles Holiday Boutique that features festive flavors and limited-edition treats.
The Sprinkles Holiday Boutique starts with a limited-time Spiced Cranberry Vanilla cupcake and Gratitude Dozen (through November 27), followed by an expanded lineup of festive flavors available November 28 through December 25.
The Spiced Cranberry Vanilla is a vanilla cake filled with spiced cranberry compote, topped with cream cheese frosting, and finished with freeze-dried cranberries
The Gratitude Dozen contains three pumpkin, three dark chocolate, three red velvet, and three vanilla, all adorned with festive decorations, plus gift wrap.
You can also order the Gratitude Mini Dozen with four red velvet, four pumpkin, and four vanilla mini cupcakes.
Starting November 28 is the Joy Dozen, a mix of three chocolate peppermint, three red velvet, three Christmas cookie, and three gingerbread cupcakes.
And then there’s the chocolate peppermint layer cake: rich Belgian dark chocolate cake with bittersweet peppermint frosting and crushed peppermint candies. Available in 4-inch, 6-inch and 8-inch.
You can also pre-order The Grinch, a playful red velvet cupcake topped with Grinch-green cream cheese frosting.
If you’ve never had a Sprinkle’s cupcake, this is the perfect time to find out why there’s often a line of cupcake fans out the door. But if you’re already a fan (like me), make sure you snap up these seasonal flavors before it’s too late.
The Newport Beach location is at 944 Avocado Ave. in the Corona del Mar Plaza. Visit https://sprinkles.com.
