Have you ever been yearning for a specific flavor of ice cream or anything and then when you finally get it, it’s just doesn’t live up to your expectations? That usually happens when I come across an ice cream place that makes Butter Brickle.
The freshest, bestest, creamiest Butter Brickle will always live in my memories from The Guernsey Cow in Exton PA. The second best was at the Yum Yum Affair in Sea Isle, NJ.
At The Cow, we had big 10 or 15 gallon drums filled to the brim with brickles — essentially the broken up hard toffee center of a Heath bar without the chocolate coating. When I worked there I would take a Butter Brickle break after a mad rush like we’d experience when a tourist bus would show up or the fireworks at the Exton Mall would let out on the 4th of July.
I’d scoop a small bowl and head into the deep freezer where we kept the five-gallon cardboard bulk ice cream containers stacked. Then I’d open up a brickle drum and garnish my ice cream with a healthy helping of fresh crunchy brickles. In the heat of summer, sitting in the deep freezer after a mad rush for a quick respite was all you needed to keep going for the rest of the night.
When you can get Butter Brickle ice cream today, in most instances, the brickles have sat in the ice cream for so long — or sat too long before the ice cream was frozen solid — and they turn out to be squishy chewy bits of nothing. It’s probably the reason not too many places make it anymore.