Tag: Ice Cream

REVIEW: Dairy Queen French Silk Pie Blizzard

Denis 2 Comments

My wife rarely reads my reviews, so I’m going to roll the dice and hope she doesn’t see the following statement: If I could marry a member of the pie family, I would get on bended knee and offer a glistening strawberry ring pop to French silk pie so that we could be together forever

I’m not even a big pie person, but there’s something about that smooth, chocolatey goodness that just gets me. So, I was quite interested in trying Dairy Queen’s new-ish French Silk Pie Blizzard, which is part of the Fall Blizzard menu. It was apparently introduced in 2004 and has been available at various times since, but we’ve never reviewed it. It’s quite possible—even likely—that I’ve had it in the past and forgot, considering I don’t even remember what I ate for lunch today, and I had to check my phone to determine the day of the week. So it’s new to me.

I knew I would probably like this Blizzard, but the question was whether I would love it. The list of components was promising: choco chunks, pie pieces, and cocoa fudge with whipped topping. But despite my high hopes, let’s just say this Blizzard is more like a friend rather than marriage material. The chocolate flavor is great, and even a bit silky, at least as silky as you can get for ice cream, and the whipped topping always makes a Blizzard better.

My issue is the pie crust. I’m not sure if my local DQ got a bad batch, but the crust pieces were very crunchy, almost with the consistency of an animal cracker. There was very little of the crumbliness I associate with pie crust, and the pieces were monstrous, with a few being about the size of two Cinnamon Toast Crust pieces fused together. And the flavor was more like a cookie than pie crust.

Again, the chocolate part was wonderful. The cocoa fudge flavor did a perfect job of transforming the vanilla soft serve into chocolatey bliss, and the choco chunks brought an added layer of texture and taste. But the crust pieces just put a damper on the whole thing.

So I like you, French Silk Pie Blizzard, but I’m sorry to say that I don’t want to marry you. But we can still be friends. And yes, it is you, not me.

Purchased Price: $4.99
Size: Small
Rating: 7 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: 730 calories, 33 grams of fat, 20 grams of saturated fat, 1 gram of trans fat, 50 milligrams of cholesterol, 310 milligrams of sodium, 98 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of fiber, 76 grams of sugar, and 14 grams of protein.

REVIEW: Dairy Queen Caramel Java Chip Blizzard

Marvo 1 Comment

I’m 10 percent sure Dairy Queen Caramel Java Chip Blizzard has no caffeine. But I’m 100 percent sure it has coffee, choco-espresso crunch pieces, and caramel topping blended with soft serve because I copied and pasted most of this sentence from the Dairy Queen app. Looking through the ingredients of the dessert that I’m 10 percent sure children should eat, I noticed instant coffee and coffee concentrate. Okay, I’m eight percent sure now.

As you can guess from the photo above, my Blizzard was not served upside down. But it didn’t help that I took a short outdoor walk from the Dairy Queen to someplace with enough light to take decent photos, which ended up being the sitting area of a Starbucks inside a Target. The heat and humidity probably caused more melting. (Yes, I bought something from the Starbucks.)

But sitting next to those baristas was helpful because doing so made me realize that I probably got more coffee flavor in my mouth by breathing in the air at a Starbucks inside a Target than I did from the Caramel Java Chip Blizzard.

Those choco-espresso crunch pieces aren’t chocolate-covered espresso beans. Instead, they’re coffee-flavored rice crisps in a chocolatey coating, and the way they crunch reminds me more of Buncha Crunch candy than cocoa-coated espresso beans. Mine had a lot of them, enough that every spoonful had one. But the java flavor isn’t robust even with so many of them. With the first few spoonfuls, I could notice it, but at some point, that faded, and I mostly tasted the coating with a slight dark chocolate bitterness.

Much like the choco-espresso crunch pieces, the caramel topping mixed with the soft serve makes itself known with every spoonful, and I wonder if its buttery sweetness contributed to the lack of java flavor. Also, I didn’t taste any coffee when eating the caramel-enhanced soft serve on its own. However, the chocolate and caramel combination is good, and the crispy crunch from those chocolatey pieces is delightful.

Despite eating a small order, I still don’t know if Dairy Queen’s Caramel Java Chip Blizzard contains caffeine. However, ordering and drinking a Starbucks cold brew while eating the Blizzard and writing this review probably prevented me from finding out. But what I do know is that this needs more coffee flavor. It’s so weak that I could convince the Starbucks baristas in front of me that this is a Choco Caramel Blizzard.

Purchased Price: $6.89*
Size: Small
Rating: 6 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: 630 calories, 22 grams of fat, 16 grams of saturated fat, 0.5 grams of trans fat, 50 milligrams of cholesterol, 260 milligrams of sodium, 95 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 76 grams of sugar, and 13 grams of protein.

*Because I live on a rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, things are a bit pricier here. You’ll probably pay less than I did.

REVIEW: GoodPop Ore-Ida Fudge N’ Vanilla French Fry Pop

Sean 4 Comments

Ore-Ida getting into the ice cream game is not something I had on my radar for the second half of 2024, but I am totally here for this experimental weirdness. I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised by any unusual brand collaborations these days, and despite not seeing this one coming, it does make sense. Although I am not personally a fan of dunking my fries into a milkshake, I know it’s a popular move, and I do enjoy the two in tandem, as the sweet and salty complement each other well. To emulate this burger joint staple, GoodPop has taken a creamy dairy-free oat milk base and coated it with chocolate fudge sprinkled with real crispy potatoes.

As a mission statement, GoodPop only uses dairy and gluten-free ingredients, so it’s no surprise they know how to do a decadent vegan ice cream bar well. The oat milk base is nice and creamy, with a touch of fluffiness and decent density. The flavor is unmistakably oat milk for those familiar with dairy versus nondairy frozen desserts, but it’s a safe and satisfying execution of a plain/vanilla profile. The finish has a touch of the taste of the way Play-Doh smells, which probably sounds like a bad thing, but I’ve tasted this in a lot of oat milk bases, and I don’t mind it at all.

Where this bar really shines is in the chocolate coating. You could have fooled me into thinking this was a full-on milk-laden Häagen-Dazs exterior because of the fantastic flavor. Bittersweet in its profile, it has a luxuriously melty mouthfeel and the perfect level of thickness to really carry and enhance the enjoyment of the novelty treat.

But what about the potatoes? The potatoes totally work and deliver a big, bold, satisfying crunch that ties the whole experience together like a Christmas bow. A decent amount of fried potato flavor comes through, too. Not so much that it’s distracting from the overall sweet presence of the dessert, but enough to stand out from your average Nestle Crunch-style rice coating.

My one gripe with the potatoes and the bar as a whole is that it could be a bit saltier. There is some salt there, and it’s largely dependent on the density of the potatoes in any specific bite, but because the potatoes are covered in chocolate, there are times that that salty pop doesn’t come through. It’s far from non-existent, but I wanted a little more for a product that’s supposed to boldly emphasize its sweet and saltiness.

As a vegan ice cream treat, this is about as good as it gets. With a bit more salt and a bit more availability, this could become an all-time collaboration between two standouts of the frozen food aisle.

Purchased Price: $9.99
Size: 9.32 ounces
Purchased at: Online
Rating: 8 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (1 bar) 160 calories, 10 grams of fat, 7 grams of saturated fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 60 milligrams of sodium, 14 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 10 grams of sugar, and 2 grams of protein.

REVIEW: Blue Bell Cookies ’n Cream Cheesecake Ice Cream

Denis 2 Comments

If you browse through a supermarket, or indeed this very website, you will find all kinds of products with outrageous names and flavor combinations designed to get your attention. But oftentimes those foods don’t live up to their overly creative monikers, or shockingly, it turns out that pickle and onion-flavored gummy bears are not good. So, I routinely give Blue Bell credit for its straightforward names and flavors, and once again it has scored a winner with its new Cookies ’n Cream Cheesecake Ice Cream.

Certainly, this flavor is not revolutionary, as Dairy Queen has an Oreo Cheesecake Blizzard, and you can find many similar ice cream flavors from other brands. What it is, however, is mighty tasty. The label doesn’t overpromise, but it does excellently deliver what it promises: cheesecake-flavored ice cream with chocolate cookie-crusted cheesecake pieces and generic Oreo.

The cheesecake ice cream is wonderfully smooth and creamy. It packs enough cheesecake flavor so that you know it’s there, but it doesn’t go overboard. Sometimes an ice cream flavor is too strong, to the point that you forget it’s ice cream or it’s too mild, and you can barely tell what the flavor was supposed to be. This one hits the right balance. Then when you do chomp down on a cheesecake piece, you get the full-on cheesecake experience, and it really hits the spot. Their texture is also spot-on, as they are not too firm but also not so soft that they blend with the ice cream. The fact that the pieces are chocolate cookie-crusted is hard to notice since there are already chocolate crème-filled cookies in the mix. And I’ll assume you know what those cookies taste like and how they are a perfect complement to cheesecake.

This ice cream is not fancy or flashy, but if you enjoy cookies ’n cream and you enjoy cheesecake, then I can almost guarantee you will enjoy this—and perhaps really enjoy it. Just be aware that my guarantee is not legally binding in any way, shape, or form, and if you printed said guarantee out on a piece of paper, it would make that paper worth less than its original value.

Purchased Price: $3.99
Size: One Pint
Purchased at: Brookshire Brothers
Rating: 9 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (2/3 cup) 240 calories, 12 grams of fat, 7 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 35 milligrams of cholesterol, 190 milligrams of sodium, 29 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of dietary fiber, 21 grams of sugar, and 5 grams of protein.

REVIEW: McDonald’s Kit Kat Banana Split McFlurry

Marvo 7 Comments

It’s a bit surprising that McDonald’s Kit Kat Banana Split McFlurry, with its inclusion of bananas, doesn’t have a Minions tie-in. The McFlurry cups could’ve totally been dressed up as Minions. But I guess it would’ve been weird to have two tie-in promotions simultaneously.

The latest treat from The Golden Arches has every flavor you’d expect from a banana split — chocolate from the Kit Kat, vanilla from the soft serve, strawberry from the crispy cereal, and banana from the freeze-dried fruit pieces. However, every chocolate piece in the cup isn’t part of a Kit Kat. There are also semisweet and dark chocolate chips in the mix.

When McDonald’s started using flavored cereal pieces, beginning with its Strawberry Shortcake McFlurry, I thought it was a cheap way to get flavor into the soft serve. Why not use a sauce, I thought at the time. But doing it this way has grown on me. I mean, it’s not ideal, but they ensure there’s some texture with the treat, and most of the time, they’ve turned out decent-tasting.

The Kit Kat pieces are roughly as small as the chocolate chips, so they aren’t very substantial. They also don’t have the crispiness I expect from the classic candy bar. However, the other mix-ins make you think there are larger chunks. The strawberry-flavored cereal (which, because of their color, don’t seem to be the same ones from the Strawberry Shortcake McFlurry) has a crispiness that could be mistaken for Kit Kat’s wafers, and the snap and flavor of the chocolate chips could be thought of as the coating around the wafers.

The banana flavor depends on whether you get one of those freeze-dried fruit pieces. If you get one on your spoon, you’ll get a noticeable natural flavor that completes the image of a banana split. In fact, getting all the flavors associated with the colorful dessert with this McFlurry is much easier than trying to do it with an actual banana split. Speaking of the dessert, I’m surprised this didn’t come with the treat’s obligatory whipped cream topping and cherry.

Overall, I immensely enjoyed the Kit Kat Banana Split McFlurry, but I might be biased as I love the yellow fruit in many forms, even freeze-dried. It captures all the flavors of a banana split, but I wonder if adding Kit Kat was even necessary. I guess “Kit Kat Banana Split” looks and sounds better than “Banana Split.” But if this returns next year as the Banana Split McFlurry with the same chocolate chips and without Kit Kat, I believe I’d still like it.

Purchased Price: $4.99
Rating: 8 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: 540 calories, 17 grams of fat, 11 grams of saturated fat, 0.5 grams of trans fat, 45 milligrams of cholesterol, 230 milligrams of sodium, 85 grams of carbohydrates, 70 grams of sugar, 1 gram of fiber, and 12 grams of protein.