KANSAS CITY — Meal occasions collide in several new menu offerings, as restaurants serve sweet fusions of dessert staples and breakfast favorites.
Cold Stone Creamery is blending a beloved breakfast pastry with an indulgent dessert in its new Blueberry Donut Shake. Featuring sweet cream ice cream, milk, blueberries and a blueberry donut blended in, the shake is topped with whipped topping and a whole blueberry donut.
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| Michael Serruya, chairman and c.e.o. of Cold Stone parent company Kahala Brands |
“Our products are consistently on trend and pique consumers’ interests,” said Michael Serruya, chairman and chief executive officer of Cold Stone parent company Kahala Brands. “For instance, we are offering a delicious and decadent Blueberry Donut Shake. Heavily indulgent shakes combined with donuts are very trendy right now on both coasts and have started to spread into the middle of the country, so we know this will be a popular offering with our customers nationwide.”
Donuts and ice cream unite again in Shake Shack’s Rainbow Connection Concrete. Featuring local Los Angeles ingredients, the offering consists of vanilla frozen custard mixed with pieces of a spiced crumb donut from a local coffeehouse, rainbow sprinkles and a strawberry and rose geranium jam from a local.
Also innovating with donuts, Baskin-Robbins is launching its new customizable Donut Ice Cream Sandwich. The treat features the customer’s choice of ice cream flavor topped with hot fudge and sandwiched between a powdered sugar donut.
Friendly’s is joining the breakfast-inspired reinvention of the ice cream sandwich with its new Pop-Tart Ice Cream Sandwiches. The ice cream chain offers the treats in three varieties: The Candy Bar Ice Cream Sandwich, featuring candy bar ice cream rolled in pieces of a Take 5 bar sandwiched between two frosted chocolate fudge Pop-Tarts; the Forbidden Chocolate Ice Cream Sandwich, featuring the chain’s Forbidden Fudge ice cream and chocolate sprinkles sandwiched between two frosted chocolate fudge Pop-Tarts; and the Strawberry Ice Cream Sandwich, featuring strawberry ice cream and rainbow sprinkles sandwiched between two frosted strawberry Pop-Tarts.
Two dessert mainstays are making their debut at breakfast with IHOP’s new Bakery Favorite items. The chain’s new Cupcake Pancakes consist of IHOP’s signature buttermilk pancakes filled with rainbow sprinkles then topped with cupcake icing and whipped topping. The Red Velvet Crepe is a red chocolate crepe filled with sweet cream cheese and drizzled with cream cheese icing.
