New Haagen Dazs flavour and baked apples with mincemeat

We are big fans of Haagen-Dazs and you can find a couple of tubs of Vanilla in our freezer at any time. Their Vanilla is a classic flavour, purely indulgent and perfect on all accounts. We have tried Vanilla ice cream as made by all major brands, here and abroad, and this is the one we return to again and again.
I'm also very fond of Dulce de Leche, it is absolutely decadent. I can't say we have tried every single flavour from Haagen Dazs, but definitely most of those which are widely available in supermarkets.
In summer we often eat ice cream with fruit salads, in winter we enjoy it with baked apples, hot puds and stewed fruit.
Haagen-Dazs has recently released a new beautiful seasonal flavour for Autumn/Winter 2016 - Honey, Walnut & Cream. It should be available now in all leading supermarkets and online. I found it in Sainsbury's locally.

I first discovered Haagen-Dazs over 14 years ago, when we lived in New Haven, Connecticut. I was pregnant with Sasha, and this delicious ice cream was one of my big cravings.

What did we all think of the new seasonal flavour? It proved to be a great success.
It is an inspired combination of flavours and textures. You get smooth creamy ice cream, speckled with crunchy pieces of walnut. It tastes wonderful too, sweet and aromatic.

I have served it with baked apples, as well as with plums roasted in sweet cider, and both desserts were temptingly tasty, yet very simple to make.

If you go out in our garden, our old apple trees are now naked, all the leaves have fallen. Yet there are still some very stubborn red apples clinging to the branches at the very top. Last week I picked a good amount of windfalls from the lawn. They wouldn't keep long, as some of them are slightly bruised from the fall. However, they are perfectly fine for cooking.
I have recently made a batch of mincemeat (recipe courtesy of Tate & Lyle) and had 1/3 mincemeat leftovers in one of the jars.

Baked apples with mincemeat
Ingredients:
5 small to medium apples
5 heaped tsp of mincemeat
75ml apple juice
cinnamon
good quality ice cream to serve with

Set the oven to 180C. Slice tops of the apples and core them using a small knife, taking care not to cut right through to the bottom.
Place the apples in a deep ceramic dish or smaller size roasting tray. Fill each apple with a heaped teaspoon of mincemeat. Sprinkle with cinnamon. Put the apple lids on. Pour the apple juice around the apples.

Bake in the oven for 40+ minutes until the apples are soft and fluffy inside.

Serve with a good dollop of ice cream. We are never patient enough to wait until the ice cream is soft enough to make a perfect ball-like scoop.

You might also like to try serving this ice cream with plums roasted in sweet cider.

Of course, you might just enjoy eating it straight from the tub, without any additional fruit.
This new Haagen Dazs flavour gets top marks from us.

Have you tried the new Haagen Dazs ice cream flavour?

Disclosure: I received two vouchers to buy two tubs of new ice cream. All opinions are our own.