I know winter is supposed to be all fuzzy slippers and hot cocoa and half a metric ton of cinnamon spice, but, as someone known to recite Shakespearean love sonnets to frozen dairy, I need little to entice me that the dead middle of winter is the perfect time for some ice cream. Especially if it involves cookies, chocolate, and caramel, and boom-shackalacka! Haagen-Dazs is delivering just that.
If you don’t have soft spot in your heart for gooey, deeply nutty caramel, just turn away ‘cause this bar is ribboned with the stuff. Now, in case you haven’t yet had the near-holy, angels-singing-from-the-sky experience of dulce de leche yet, prepare thyself to be amazed! For dulce de leche is what becomes of sweetened condensed milk after being slowly caramelized, creating an effect that is less sharply sugary than regular caramel and more nutty-sweet.
Here, it serves as a thick, sweetened, gooey, nutty confection that strings out like mad from the surrounding sweeter caramel ice cream, which provided me with enough energy to hurl a monster truck across a football field.
And it doesn’t even stop there, folks. The chocolate coating is snappy, sweet, and drizzled with just a tad bit of semisweet chocolate to yin out the yang of the main milk chocolate base. The Oreo-like cookie wafer has a snap, crumble, chew, and durability that holds up to the weight of the ice cream above. Taken as a whole, the result is crispy, creamy, nutty, crumbly, chocolatey, and other delicious adjectives that end in “y.” It all makes for something so delicious.
In this small three-dimensional square, Haagen-Dazs proves that, while it may be winter, dessert doesn’t have to taste like a Gingerbread Man’s spice drawer to be absolutely delicious in a blustery season. Indeed, sometimes, a simple, well-executed square of cookie, ice cream, and chocolate is just the thing to transform a callous-hearted, snowy-sludged humbug into a un-grumpified, semi-regularly-functioning human who has big dreams and has done adult things today and deserves something very, very spectacular.
Like you, dear reader.
You deserve something very, very spectacular. So go get you some! They may not be perfect and hardly toe the line of breaking new ground, but they are delicious. And, for today, delicious is enough.
(Nutrition Facts – 1 bar – 310 calories, 170 calories from fat, 18 grams of fat, 13 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 30 milligrams of cholesterol, 120 milligrams of sodium, 34 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of dietary fiber, 26 grams of sugar, and 4 grams of protein.)
Purchased Price: $3.34 (on sale)
Size: 1 box/3 bars
Purchased at: Ralph’s
Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: Nutty, nutty dulce de leche. Milk and semisweet chocolate. Durable, Oreo-like cookie wafer. Enough sugar to hurl a monster truck across a football field.
Cons: Not the best if you’re looking for crazy mix-ins. Callous-hearted, snowy-sludged humbugs.
