US ice cream chain apologises for 'taste the Lin-Sanity' fortune cookies

New York, Feb 26 (ANI): Ben and Jerry's has apologised after a sweet attempt to honour the rising Knicks star Jeremy Lin left a bad taste in the mouths of some of its customers.

The limited-edition flavour, 'Taste the Lin-Sanity', featured crumbled fortune cookies along with honey swirls and a frozen yogurt vanilla base.

After a near-immediate backlash over the racist implications of using a fortune cookie, the Cambridge, Mass. store issued an apology on its Facebook page on Friday and substituted the fortune cookies with the waffle variety.

"Our intention was to create a flavour to honour Jeremy Lin's accomplishments and his meteoric rise in the NBA, and recognize that he was a local Harvard graduate. ... If we failed in this instance we offer our sincere apologies," the New York Daily News quoted the apology as saying.

The American ince cream company's fortune-cookie brain freeze follows a series of racially insensitive gaffes about the rising basketball star.

Last week, an ESPN employee was fired for writing the headline "Ch--- in the armor" on the sports network's mobile site, and an ESPN News anchor was suspended for using the same phrase repeatedly on the air.

On Thursday, the Asian American Journalists Association came out with a set of guidelines on covering Lin to avoid future faux pas.

Ryan Midden, the store's general manager, told the Boston Globe on Friday that customers seemed overwhemingly excited about the limited-edition flavour despite the misstep.

"There seemed to be a bit of an initial backlash about it, but we obviously weren't looking to offend anybody and the majority of the feedback about it has been positive," Midden said.

By Saturday afternoon, the store announced on Twitter that it was sold out of the limited-edition pints.

Midden told the Globe that the primary reason they changed the recipe is that customers found the fortune cookies got too soggy. (ANI)