Under the tagline It’s NOT Ice Cream, former painter-decorator turned cheesecake connoisseur, Joe Moruzzi is set on a course to disrupt the entire dessert market with what we’ve found to be a genuinely interesting and delicious product — freezecakes.
It’s a real shame that the product doesn’t want to refer to itself as ice cream, because when we at Your Local Link got the opportunity to review the freezecake flavours, there was general agreement that it was the nicest, creamiest (supermarket) ice cream we’d tried in years. That was before I broke the news that despite appearances, the freezecake isn’t ice cream at all, but the world’s first frozen cheesecake to be put in a tub.
In putting together freezecakes, Joe and his team had to think outside the box, replacing the tested alliance of double cream and milk (the core of any ice cream recipe) with cream cheese— adding a refreshing frozen tinge to the rich and plentiful flavours of a cheesecake. Joe’s brand Pleese have been mastering the art of simple cheesecake recipes since 2017, culminating in the release of a recipe-book: “Pleesecakes: 60 AWESOME No-Bake Cheesecake Recipes” — in the years since they’ve worked to breathe new life into the dessert, hatching a revolutionary plan to disrupt the ice cream industry with the ultimate hybrid product.
We had the chance to test all three of the flavours, Butterscotch & Caramel, Lemon & Raspberry and Double Chocolate — they didn’t disappoint. Once our office overcame the shock that this luxurious dessert was indeed not ice-cream, even with its deceptive appearance — we agreed that a scoop goes a long way, offering you all the satisfaction of an entire bowl of ice cream but lasting twice as long. This was especially true of the Butterscotch and Caramel, which tastes the most similar to a traditional cheesecake. The indulgent body of the butterscotch freezecake is percolated full of delicious biscuit bits, which are themselves chocolate covered and paired with gooey parcels of caramel. If it wasn’t so refreshingly cold you’d soon forget you’re not sat eating dessert in a high-end restaurant.
The Double Chocolate was our favourite, its’ texture is so velvety that I still think a few of our team are in doubt over my correction that it’s not actually an ice-cream. It doesn’t taste like any old ice cream though — the texture is so creamy that, save for a proper Italian gelato stand, chocolate desserts seldom taste as good. Someone remarked that it might be the most revolutionary supermarket dessert since Haagen-Dazs ice cream first exploded onto the scene in the 1970s, so I’ll leave you with that thought, Freezecakes are a bit like ice cream— just better.
You can buy a tub at your local Co-op or Waitrose, to read more about Pleese and Freezecakes head to www.pleese.com.
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