Solving the Mystery of the Missing Vienetta
Thursday, January 8th, 2009Several years ago, I had a frozen ice cream dessert that I simply can’t forget. It was a lovely layering of super-thin chocolate and soft vanilla ice cream, luscious and decadent. Surprisingly, I didn’t encounter this memorable dessert at a fancy restaurant; it was readily available at my local grocery store.
Then all of a sudden and without warning, it vanished. My local grocery store no longer carried it, and neither I nor my husband could find it at any other store. We tried. Man, we tried. The problem was, or so I thought, I simply couldn’t remember the name of the dessert. It exceedingly difficult to explain what I was looking for to anyone else. After a year or so I gave up. But every so often, and for the next several years, I would check the frozen section hoping to spot something that looked like what I remembered.
Then I happened to mention it in conversation with my folks around the dinner table on New Year’s Eve. My mom instantly knew what I was talking about. She’d loved that dessert too and had also noticed that it had disappeared. She thought carefully and said, “It was a Vienna-something”. That was enough for my husband to do a Google search and discover the name that had eluded us for years:
Breyers Vienetta.
Heaven on earth.
Once I’d had my memory jogged, it was a cinch to find more information online. I remember this commercial for Vienetta:
Apparently Vienetta is still available in Europe by Unilever , and quite popular. But for some reason still unknown to me, it was discontinued in the United States, despite the fact that I it seems I was not the only person who still dreams of this dessert. At least I am not alone in wishing this was still available in the U.S. I would not be surprised if it was all due to some kind of legal problem regarding a U.S. patent or some such.
At least the production video is still available on YouTube. It makes me wonder how difficult it would be to create something like this at home.
Ah, Vienetta. How I miss thee.
Update (April 20, 2010):
This has, hands-down, been one of the most popular blog posts I’ve ever written (and that includes previous blogs from nearly a decade ago). Obviously I’m in good company – there’s a LOT of you out there that miss this lovely dessert.
What could be more maddening than remembering this, craving it and discovering it had been discontinued? Finding out that it was brought back, for a limited time and that I missed it.
Yup, that’s right. It was back. Well … sort of. And now it’s gone again.
Apparently Unilever brought out a “Viennetta” branded dessert for the 2008/2009 winter holidays in the United States. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) the product was back off the shelves in February of 2009, which explains why my searches for it have been fruitless (ice creamless?) since people reported seeing it in January of 2009.
Why fortunately? It wasn’t exactly the same product we remember. The original was made with Breyer’s ice cream and this holiday temporary fix wasn’t even made with real ice cream. Ingredients were: “nonfat milk, sugars, whey, cocoa, propylene glycol monoesters, cellulose gels, mono and diglycerides, locust bean gum, polysorbate 80, guar gum, natural flavor and carrageenan.”
Oh why do they vex us so? *sigh* At least we’ve got the memories. Right?
You know what? I’m going to try to create something like this at home. I’ll report back on the success or failure of the attempt. Wish me luck!