Review: Van Leeuwen's New Holiday Flavors Are Worth Celebrating

Van Leeuwen's new holiday flavors are absolutely crave-worthy. The four tasty options can be the perfect addition to your holiday dessert spread or just a cool, festive treat. After giving them a try, one thing is obvious: Van Leeuwen sure knows how to celebrate the season.

As one of the best ice cream brands out there, the company still works hard to create exceptional and interesting flavors. From its start as a modest yellow food truck in 2008, Van Leeuwen's mission has always remained the same: "Make good ice cream that makes you feel good." With great ingredients and fabulous flavors, there's always something new coming from their kitchens — and this holiday season is no different.

This year, the yuletide ice creams include Peppermint Pattie, Marzipan Cake with Fudge Swirl, Caramel Sticky Bun, and Brown Sugar Chunk. Rich and decadent, we think you're going to struggle to pick a favorite for the season; we certainly did.

Peppermint and chocolate are two flavors that complement one another perfectly. The rich cacao does a great job of holding up the peppermint while mellowing it a little bit. National Today explains that these flavors became forever intertwined in the 1940s with the invention of the York Peppermint Patty.

This ice cream flavor has a great minty nip with chocolate lace running through it. The small chocolate pieces throughout tasted like Andes candies in ice cream form. This dessert certainly offers a fresh feel and taste, making it the perfect after-meal treat. Plus, this new flavor has the lowest number of calories per serving at 290. It also contains 11 grams of saturated fat, 95 milligrams of cholesterol, 28 grams of carbohydrates, and 24 total grams of sugar.

For other options with that bright feel and delicious taste, check out the brand's Mint Chip and Bourbon Cherries Jubilee. To find this delicious flavor, as well as some of the others on this list, you'll need to head over to Walmart. There, you'll find the holiday treats for sale at $4.98 a pint (as of November 2022).

Standard marzipan is a candy made from almond meal, powdered sugar, and egg yolks. Since eggs are a primary ingredient in French ice cream, marzipan is a splendid add-in for this dessert. It is a much more popular treat throughout Europe that becomes even more favored throughout the Christmas season. In fact, stollen bread, a sweet pastry stuffed with marzipan, candied fruit, and nuts, is a popular tradition in Germany.

Full of the same base ingredients as the other flavors here, this Van Leeuwen ice cream also has brown sugar, chocolate liquor, and cocoa powder. Even with those sweet and delicious additions, Marzipan Cake with Fudge Swirl has the same number of calories as the Peppermint Pattie flavor. There are also 9 grams of saturated fat, 85 milligrams of cholesterol, 34 grams of carbohydrates, and 27 total grams of sugar.

We enjoyed the almond that comes through nice and strong with this ice cream. It's very smooth and sweet, and with the marzipan flavor, the dessert also has a bit of a cherry taste that brightens up the other key ingredients. We found this one sweet and warm, with a delicious chocolate accent throughout the scoop. The cocoa is undoubtedly present, but it is not overpowering.

You'll find a few other cake flavors from Van Leeuwen, including Raspberry Layer Cake, Royal Wedding Cake, and Praline Butter Cake. Each option celebrates a unique flavor and carefully blends the chilled treat with the classic baked dessert.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this ice cream has a very sweet flavor, almost like honey. We also found that the chunks of sticky bun throughout are pretty evident. We enjoyed these pieces and found they added a nice texture to the dessert. It was smooth but also had a nice bit of chewiness and bite.

Of the holiday flavors, the Caramel Sticky Bun variety has one of the more simple ingredient lists needed for the ice cream and sticky bun pieces, like brown rice flour and unbleached wheat flour. It reads very much like a set of required ingredients in a pastry. Also, based on this, you'll see that Van Leeuwen ensures that its flavors taste authentically great. The ingredients also make this ice cream the most heavily flavored of the brand's holiday line. A pint of Caramel Sticky Bun rings in at 310 calories per serving, 11 grams of saturated fat, 85 milligrams of cholesterol, 37 grams of carbohydrates, and 29 total grams of sugar.

While there aren't many flavors similar to this one, Van Leeuwen does offer a vegan Pumpkin Cinnamon Roll option. Like the sticky bun pieces in this holiday edition, it has natural ingredients, such as pureed pumpkin and other seasonal spices. However, while Caramel Sticky Bun delivers delicious bits of pastry in each bite, our final entry, the Brown Sugar Chunk, does it even better.

With dark brown sugar ice cream, you don't need to add much to make it delicious; it's pretty perfect already. However, Van Leeuwen's brownie and cookie dough inclusions make this flavor one you'll love. The unexpected combination of brownie chunks and brown sugar is surprising and makes for a delightful bite that isn't too heavy in chocolate. The pieces are moist and maintain their delicious flavor and texture, even among the ice cream, which can often make them feel harder. We are excited to say that those tasty pieces blend in smoothly here.

While the other flavors are exclusive to Walmart, this one is not. In fact, you can purchase it on the Van Leeuwen website for $12 (as of November 2022). Bear in mind that the website does require you to order at least five pints, so make sure you have a few others picked out. If you're looking for other flavors that may feel similar, we recommend the Cookies & Cream, Hazelnut Fudge Cookie, Chocolate Fudge Brownie, and Peanut Butter Brownie Cup.

In addition to the chocolatey brownies and chocolate chip morsels, this ice cream also has coconut. This fabulous combination of flavors has 300 calories per serving, 10 grams of saturated fat, 95 milligrams of cholesterol, 31 grams of carbohydrates, and 26 total grams of sugar. But, even with all this decadence, we love this ice cream and think you will enjoy it too.