Why Colorado Tokers Love Ice Cream Cake

Being stuck at home with a lot of weed and no open restaurants has led to frequent snacking. But the snack food available at my neighborhood supermarket, the city’s worst, is hardly enough to sustain a stoner, and I've gone online for junk food. My first target: Fudgie the Whale, the classic chocolate ice cream cake from Carvel.

Sadly, there are no Carvels near Denver, and the chain doesn't deliver across the country. So if anyone comes across a frozen chocolate sperm whale at their local ice cream parlor, give your boy a shout. Until then, I'll have to smoke the weed version of Fudgie, the potent Ice Cream Cake, and pretend whatever alternative from Marie Callender's is good enough.

A mix of Wedding Cake and Gelato #33 from Seed Junky Genetics, Ice Cream Cake carries a long lineage of Girl Scout Cookies, Durban Poison and Kush hybrids and phenotypes. The strain is a poster child of what a modern flower connoisseur wants, covered in a thick, sticky layer of resin like a powdered doughnut, with sweet, creamy notes of vanilla, dough and hash to boot.

Ice Cream Cake has quickly become a top-shelf strain in Denver, but achieving staying power can be hard for Cookies and Cake strains, which tend to cannibalize themselves. Ice Cream Cake's parents, Gelato and Wedding Cake, were hot two or three years ago; although both are still around, they don't stand out like they used to, with Ice Cream Cake and similar strains stealing their luster. Will Ice Cream Cake be able to hold its place among the Sour Diesels and Gorilla Glues of the world for the next couple of years? Time well tell, but it's off to a sweet start.

We've tasted the Ice Cream Cake from A Cut Above, Callie's Cannabis Shoppe, Colorado Harvest Company, Den-Rec, Eclipse Cannabis, Elements, Euflora, Golden Meds, Green Sativa, Herban Underground, Herbs 4 You, Higher Grade, L'Eagle, Life Flower, Lit, RiverRock, Simply Pure, Solace Meds, Spark, Starbuds, Sticky Fingerz and Yuma Way dispensaries, but those aren't the only shops carrying it. Our favorites have come from Den-Rec, L'Eagle and Wolf Pac, all of which are so stuffed full of terpenes that any room where you pop open a bottle winds up smelling like a marijuana malt shop. For more Kush notes, go to Den-Rec. For a more creamy smoke, try L'Eagle. And for an early end to your night, go with Wolf Pac, where the Ice Cream Cake is awash in so many trichomes that you'll think someone added kief to the bag.

Looks: Although Ice Cream Cake's buds can get lengthy, the calyxes are usually compact and spread apart, like those of many OG strains; they can also become bulbous and teardrop-shaped. The strain's name is likely connected to the heavy cloak of trichomes covering those stalagmite nugs, which even average growers have been able to pull out.

Smell: Another likely inspiration for the “Ice Cream Cake” moniker are the fluffy, layered aromas of oatmeal cookie dough, lavender and light citrus followed by classic, pungent OG whiffs of pine, peppercorns and subtle hints of rubber. The result is about as sweet and creamy as a strain gets without losing the skunky qualities that make weed, well, weed.

Flavor: Like Vanilla Kush on steroids or a sugar-dipped nug of OG, Ice Cream Cake carries intense, creamy flavors of vanilla, a lingering herbal spice, sweet, grainy notes of dough and a pungent piney overtone.

Effects: Potency isn't the only quality you need to be aware of during your first bites of Ice Cream Cake. The Herculean hybrid is largely built for nighttime use, even when toked lightly. Mid-day and afternoon sessions routinely put me to sleep for an hour or even the night, leaving my body somewhere in between loose and liquefied. While my brain isn't completely wiped out as my body melts, I definitely think a step slower.

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