august soft serve
In my quest to try all soft serves from a local bakery, today I got their August Raspberry and Lemon verbena flavour. (Note: this was in the middle of the day. I was off work sick due to what turned out to be a wisdom tooth infection and I stopped here to cheer myself up. It's been a bit of a gloomy month health-wise.)
I wasn't familiar with Lemon verbena (I assumed the Verbena part referred to a style of ice cream, for some reason) so I was expecting a raspberry and lemon flavour - but there was something else I was struggling to place, a sort of herby, maybe rosemary flavour?
It turns out Lemon verbena is a herb, and has it's own distinct flavour, variously described as "...citrusy, floral, and spicy all at once" [1] and with a "bright, slightly sweet, herbaceous flavour with a distinct hint of lemon" [2]. Every day's a school day! I was definitely getting more of a grassy, herbaceous flavour, but maybe it just stood out more as something I wasn't expecting in the ice cream.
It was a very nice flavour combination - the more subtle lemon flavour worked with a raspberry, which can be quite tart, and the raspberry syrup sauce also softened it without making the serving too sweet overall. The soft serve itself was a very creamy texture. 8/10.