An ice cream for when pigs fly!

Cincinnati’s annual Flying Pig Marathon is celebrating its 25th anniversary May 3-5. This weekend of events attracts Ohio residents and visitors to run the 5K or 10K as well as lots of activities, food and live music.

In honor of this race weekend, Graeter’s is selling a special edition “Flying Pig Tracks” pint.

As a non-Ohio native and ice cream enthusiast, I discovered Graeters when arriving at Miami University, and I fell in love with its creamy ice cream and variety of flavors. Thus, when I heard news of this special edition pint, I had to walk up High Street to try it for myself.

Upon arriving at Graeters, I purchased the “Flying Pig Tracks” flavor, which is described as vanilla ice cream with chocolate fudge and peanut butter cups. I love peanut butter cups, so this flavor description was promising.

Photo by Kaitlin McDowell | The Miami Student
Inside the "Flying Pig Tracks" pint looks very similar to a cookies and creme flavored ice cream.

At first look, this flavor looked like cookies and cream, mostly vanilla with chocolate swirls throughout. As I scooped the dessert into my cup, I also saw that there were mini peanut butter cups in the mix as well.

It was time for my first bite, and needless to say I was underwhelmed. The ice cream was overwhelmingly vanilla flavored, which in my opinion, is the most boring ice cream flavor. There were hints of chocolate, but I had expected the fudge to be more similar to thick fudge in a Ben and Jerry’s pint, whereas this was simply chocolate mixed into vanilla ice cream.

I hoped that this flavor would redeem itself with the peanut butter cups, but these were underwhelming as well. There was barely any peanut butter in their center, which was deceiving. It would have been more accurate to describe these cups as chocolate chunks, because the chocolate flavor outweighed the peanut butter.

To improve this flavor, I would suggest to Graeters adding chocolate pigs, similar to the chocolate fish in Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food flavor.

By no means was this ice cream bad, it had all the elements of a good ice cream flavor: sweet and creamy. Personally, I think special edition flavors have to have something that really makes them special. There was nothing about this flavor that would entice me to buy it again or crave it after it is no longer sold.

Rating: 5/10