An idea does not need to be complex to be brilliant. As evidence, I present Exhibit A: the new Blue Bell Strawberry Toaster Pastry ice cream. This is something that a little kid or Buddy the Elf could have come up with, and yet instead, we, the human race, created mustard, pizza, and pickle-flavored ice cream before this delicious treasure. OK, we can mostly blame Van Leeuwen for that, but still, how did it take us until 2025 to come up with this?

As you probably guessed, I like this stuff. A lot. It almost feels like something I shouldn’t be eating, like when your parents slept in, and you put chocolate sauce and whipped cream on Cap’n Crunch. I know I wasn’t the only one.

The flavor is intensely sweet, as one might expect, because it contains not only strawberry pastry pieces but also confetti sprinkles and swirls of strawberry sauce and white icing. But somehow, it’s not too sweet. This probably would have been quite good with just the ice cream and generic Pop-Tarts, but the strawberry sauce and icing really make it sublime. There’s so much color to this ice cream that it’s hard to tell what’s what, and that makes it a little better because each bite is a surprise. And if you are super impatient like I am and frequently burn your tongue by eating Pop-Tarts right out of the toaster, this ice cream also solves that problem.

I thought perhaps the pastry pieces would get a bit mushy from being encased in ice cream, but they retained a nice firm texture, probably thanks to one of the many ingredients on the label that I cannot pronounce. The sprinkles, besides adding an explosion of color, also provide a bit of extra crunchy texture. After just a few bites this became one of my favorite ice creams.

My only complaint is that this is only available for a limited time and only in pints (no half-gallons). But I’m hoping it proves to be popular enough to at least become one of the recurring Blue Bell flavors, and if I really dare to dream, that a s’mores toaster pastry flavor appears down the road. If not, then I’m going to find the blender that I’m pretty sure I have buried somewhere in a cabinet, put on an elf hat, and start experimenting.

Purchased Price: $3.99
Size: One Pint
Purchased at: Brookshire Brothers
Rating: 10 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (2/3 cup) 260 calories, 13 grams of fat, 7 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 35 milligrams of cholesterol, 55 milligrams of sodium, 33 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of dietary fiber, 29 grams of sugar, and 4 grams of protein.