Tag: Ice Cream

REVIEW: Dairy Queen Confetti Cake Dipped Cone

Julie Leave a comment

A major cornerstone of my life philosophy: I must sprinkle my week with the joy of little treats when I can. What better way to sprinkle joy than with edible confetti?

Dairy Queen agrees with me, and its newest release proves it. The Confetti Cake Dipped Cone is the latest offering in Dairy Queen’s springtime tradition of releasing limited edition dipped cones. Past flavors have included Churro, Fruity Blast, Orange Dreamsicle, and Cotton Candy.

No offense to the past flavors, but Confetti Cake is the perfect flavor for everyday celebrations. Combining butter, sugar, vanilla, and sprinkles, the flavor exemplifies all things sweet, indulgent, and colorful. Unlike its cousin, Birthday Cake, Confetti Cake is not occasion-specific, so you do not need to worry about popped balloons or the crushing weight of how quickly time passes.

I ordered a medium cone and had to take a moment to admire the beauty of the thing. Topped with Dairy Queen’s signature curl, the curvy mounds of vanilla soft serve were generously coated with the confetti cake shell. The shell’s crisp white base, decorated with rainbow flecks, perfectly represented confetti cake. Somehow, the colorful speckles didn’t muddy the white base or add any texture to disturb the absolute smoothness of the dip. The result was so pretty that I need an artist and/or scientist to dismiss my accusations of soft serve sorcery. Maybe Steven H., who made my cone, just knows what the hell he’s doing.

Texturally, the coating was perfect, cracking satisfyingly with each bite before melting away into creamy smoothness. Its flavor, however, was disappointingly one-note. I expected white chocolate or vanilla to flavor the base, but all I could taste was a combination of butter and almond extracts. While the shell was sweet, the perfume-y, artificial quality of the extracts threw off the flavor balance for me.

I almost completely stripped the shell from the cone before I realized what the taste reminded me of. Once, I made homemade buttercream frosting using powdered sugar that was over a year past its best-by date. (This was an accident, of course, not some cruel birthday prank.) The end product was creamy and rich but tasted off, like butter held together by the memory of something sweet. My neglectful baking fail was a much worse offense than the Confetti Cake Dipped Cone, but both experiences ended in disappointment.

When eaten with soft serve, the confetti shell’s flavor was mostly overwhelmed by the ice cream’s coldness. In my eyes, Dairy Queen’s vanilla soft serve is literal perfection, a sweet and creamy dream in any form, so I couldn’t be mad about having that cone in my paw. While the shell itself would rate around 4 out of 10, the ice cream bumped my overall rating up to a squarely-average 5. Colorful sprinkles can brighten up any occasion, but for the Confetti Cake Dipped Cone, it’s what’s on the inside that counts.

Purchased Price: $3.89
Size: Medium
Rating: 5 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: 470 calories, 23 grams of fat, 19 grams of saturated fat, 0.5 grams of trans fat, 30 milligrams of cholesterol, 150 milligrams of sodium, 57 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fiber, 43 grams of sugar, and 8 grams of protein

REVIEW: Ben & Jerry’s Marshmallow Sky Ice Cream

Sean 2 Comments

When you stroll into the grocery store ice cream aisle, one thing will usually jump out at you more prominently than most — the Ben & Jerry’s section. It’s usually more prominent than any others in the area, and with as many limited, new, and classic flavors as they have stocked, you would think that is all Ben & Jerry’s has to offer…but it is not.

Ben & Jerry’s keeps some of its treasured flavors quietly close to the chest and only available in Scoop Shops. One of my favorites, a dairy-laden version of Seven Layer Bar, can only be found in the dip case, and if you make it into one of B&J’s shops, you may find a couple of other surprises, too.

Good news for those without a shop nearby: a Scoop Shop exclusive has become a Limited Batch pint for the first time in a long time (ever?). Marshmallow Sky features marshmallow ice cream with marshmallow swirls and gobs of chocolate chip cookie dough and chocolate chocolate chip cookie dough.

The blue base ice cream, colored naturally with spirulina extract, is delightfully creamy with a robust vanilla flavor that isn’t as aggressively sweet as I was anticipating, and I’m totally okay with it. Marshmallow is usually a two-note flavor — sugar, then vanilla — and this base has the same two notes, but it’s much more vanilla than sugar, which is a welcomed surprise given the presence of the mix-ins. The marshmallow swirl is sticky and sweet and brings both the sugary element and texture to the mallow-sperience, thoroughly doing its job to bring the sweet taste of the summer sky to the spoon.

The double punch of dough chunks is prominent throughout and helps bring some much appreciated texture to the bites. The classic chocolate chip cookie dough’s brown sugar flavor blends in a bit with the bold vanilla backdrop of the base. But its gritty, chewy crunch and hints of chocolate poke through well. However, the bells of the ball are the chocolate chocolate chip cookie dough gobs, which REALLY make their mark with deep bittersweet notes of cocoa that cut through the base like butter. The blast of chocolate really delivers the dynamic pop I want from a good mix-in that elevates marshmallow sky oh so high into a pint that you should certainly buy.

This flavor is essentially B&J’s classic cookie dough on steroids. The base is a more robust and full-bodied vanilla than the original, and the double chocolate dough gives it a layering that the original lacks, all tied together with the sweet, sticky bow of a marshmallow swirl. Coming from the company that created cookie dough ice cream, this eats like a love letter to those who consider the classic their favorite flavor and shouldn’t be missed by those who adore the gobs of dough and vanilla with a colorful twist.

DISCLOSURE: I received a free product sample from Ben & Jerry’s. Doing so did not influence my review.

Purchased Price: FREE
Size: One Pint
Purchased at: Received from Ben & Jerry’s
Rating: 8 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (2/3 cup, 132g) 340 calories, 15 grams of fat, 9 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 65 milligrams of cholesterol, 90 milligrams of sodium, 47 grams of carbohydrates,0 grams of fiber, 35 grams of total sugars, and 5 grams of protein.

REVIEW: Blue Bell Cinnamon Twist Ice Cream

Denis 2 Comments

Life is full of difficult decisions. For me, few are harder than…pint or half-gallon? Yes, I’m talking about ice cream container sizes. It’s quite a conundrum when I see a new flavor in the grocery store freezer. Should I save a few bucks and just get a pint, or be a high roller and pay up for the half-gallon? It’s not even the money so much. Anyone can power through a subpar pint, but if you get a half-gallon that is filled with disappointment, then it just sits in your freezer until that day many months later when you finally open it again to see it has turned an odd color and looks like the landscape of Siberia. The reason for this review’s unnecessarily long introduction is that I faced that decision when buying Blue Bell’s new Cinnamon Twist ice cream. I’m happy to report that I wisely chose the pint-sized version.

If you love cinnamon, as I do, you might think this is the perfect concoction with, according to the package, “brown sugar cinnamon ice cream with cinnamon bun dough pieces in a cinnamon icing swirl.” This ice cream is certainly not bad, and if you break into my house in a couple weeks to steal it from my freezer, it will probably be gone by then, but I don’t regret not going all in on the half-gallon.

The highlight of this ice cream is the cinnamon bun dough pieces. They are about the same size and shape as the various types of dough pieces that Dairy Queen uses in its Blizzards, and they are quite tasty. They are soft and chewy and have a touch of granular texture that really says sugary cinnamon bun dough. However, its friends, cinnamon ice cream and cinnamon icing swirl, sort of miss the mark. Luckily, the dough pieces were plentiful, but the flavor was lacking when I got a bite without one of those wonderful nuggets. And a taste of just ice cream with no bun pieces and no icing swirl had only a faint hint of cinnamon flavor.

Again, this ice cream is fine but also forgettable. If the label promises three different kinds of cinnamon, then it leads to the expectation of some kind of crazy cinnamon party for your taste buds. That’s where this one missed the mark a bit.

Purchased Price: $3.99
Size: Pint
Purchased at: Brookshire Brothers
Rating: 7 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (2/3 cup) 280 calories, 13 grams of fat, 8 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 30 milligrams of cholesterol, 130 milligrams of sodium, 38 grams of carbohydrates, less than 1 gram of dietary fiber, 27 grams of sugar, and 5 grams of protein.

REVIEW: Ben & Jerry’s Impretzively Fudged and PB S’more

Sean 6 Comments

Kicking off the new year in sweet and salty style, the master churners at Ben & Jerry’s are back with two fresh additions to their vaunted lineup of chunk-laden pints: Impretzively Fudged and PB S’more.

Impretzively Fudged is chocolate ice cream with fudge-covered pretzel pieces and pretzel swirls.

This is a straightforward but delightfully effective take on a chocolate-covered pretzel. Simple isn’t always bad; in this case, it makes the pint simply stunning. The chocolate base is as good as ever, with some of the salt from the pretzel swirl bleeding into the ice cream for a more nuanced and rich chocolate flavor than the average chocolate provides — and I love it. The gritty, subtly crunchy pretzel swirl is pretty present throughout, and with only one swirl and one mix-in, the intended sweet and salty profile is inescapable and captivatingly delicious.

The fudge-covered pretzel pieces are different than I expected. Even though the description says “pieces,” I envisioned pretzel nuggets, but they are, in fact, pieces. Pieces to the point that they feel almost like shattered fragments of a chocolate pretzel bark. They have a nice crunch and genuine salty pop that makes each spoonful incredibly satisfying. This pint eats more like a chocolate chip ice cream than one with massive boulders of chunk-age, but in this case, the chocolate chips are flecks of chocolate pretzel, and it’s pure indulgent fun. The profile is a bit of a one-trick pony, but it’s a pony that I love and a trick I will gladly embrace time and time again.

PB S’more is toasted marshmallow ice cream with peanut butter cups, graham cracker pieces, and marshmallow swirls.

S’mores ice cream is usually hard to pull off, nailing the nuanced layers of flavor and texture that make the summertime treat so fantastic, and this new PB-ified iteration falls down that same tricky trajectory. Anytime I see marshmallow and graham swirls in an ice cream, I am sold, and they both do their job in this pint convincingly as some of B&J’s best mix-ins. Where it gets a bit muddied is in the toasted marshmallow base. It comes across as really sweet, and I love sweet, but this teeters on cloying. Not enough to ruin the experience, but enough to make me wish it was different. I don’t get much of a toasted flavor either, and some smokiness would have been more than welcome to temper the intense sweetness of the base and swirls.

The peanut butter cups change the pint’s dynamic for the better, bringing a big, bold crunch and semisweet chocolate punch that helps break up the overlapping monotony of the double-mallow-whammy. They are full-sized PB cups broken into giant chunks. But sadly, my pint only had four sizable pieces throughout with a couple of fragmented shards, and I only occasionally got the salty peanut butter reprieve I was hoping for. I love this flavor conceptually, but in execution, I think it would have been much better with a different base — graham, peanut butter, or even chocolate — to make the scoop more balanced in moments without the excellent boulders of PB cups.

All in all, these are fun ways to start the new year for one of the most prolific brands in grocery store ice cream. This drop steps away from the novelty of a Topped or Core’d pint to deliver a slightly tweaked version of Gimme S’more and a more bare-bones spin on Glampfire Trail Mix. If you’re a fan of those, this will likely appeal to you and should be arriving on shelves now!

DISCLOSURE: I received free product samples from Ben & Jerry’s. Doing so did not influence my review.

Purchased Price: FREE
Size: One Pint
Rating: 9 out of 10 (Impretzively Fudged), 7 out of 10 (PB S’more)
Nutrition Facts: (2/3 cup) Impretzively Fudged – 390 calories, 23 grams of fat, 14 grams of saturated fat, 0.5 grams of trans fat, 50 milligrams of cholesterol, 260 milligrams of sodium, 42 grams of carbohydrates, 3 grams of fiber, 32 grams of total sugars, and 6 grams of protein. PB S’more – 370 calories, 19 grams of fat, 12 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 55 milligrams of cholesterol, 120 milligrams of sodium, 45 grams of carbohydrates, less than 1 gram of fiber, 35 grams of total sugars, and 6 grams of protein.

REVIEW: Sonic Peanut Butter Bacon Shake

Jenna 3 Comments

Sonic has rolled out two new limited edition Peanut Butter Bacon items, a shake and a cheeseburger, though perhaps fortunately for my nerves (which can only handle so much adventurous eating in one day), I’ll just be reviewing the shake here.

Let me be upfront: it’s not as strange as you may be afraid (or hoping) it will be. That’s because the bacon doesn’t really dominate the experience… though neither does the peanut butter.

The Peanut Butter Bacon Shake has a base of vanilla ice cream, which is understandable logistically speaking — Sonic’s a fast food joint, not an ice cream parlor capable of offering a gazillion unique flavors— but leads to the undeniable fact that it tastes more like its vanilla foundation than the mix-ins that are supposed to be featured. It also doesn’t help that the thick, creamy texture of the peanut butter doesn’t exactly blend in seamlessly with vanilla ice cream that has a thick, creamy texture too but also has the advantage of being present in a much higher quantity. If the peanut butter component came from something more mixable, like a syrup or even just a bunch of Reese’s Pieces, I think it would make much more of an impact, but as is, the smudges of peanut butter flavor only come through in small, infrequent, slightly unsatisfying doses.

You’ll notice I haven’t even mentioned the bacon yet, and that’s because it is similarly outshined. It comes in the form of well-cooked bits, a mix of larger, crispy dark red pieces and smaller, slightly chewier lighter ones, which are scattered liberally atop the rich, thick whipped topping (wimpy whipped cream it is not!) that crowns the shake. That looks cool, but sort of separates the bacon from the rest of the experience.

Yes, you could stab your straw directly into a batch of bacon bits and suck them all up at once for a rush of salty meatiness, but I’m guessing you’ll probably just do what I did, which was sip the shake without positioning the straw any particular way, resulting in mostly bacon-less sips (some bits were swirled up throughout the shake, but not enough that it really affected the flavor) with the bits on top gradually sinking to the bottom to be dealt with once the rest of the shake is gone. If we’re being pedantic, the whole thing felt more like a “Vanilla Shake with Peanut Butter Swirl and Bacon on Top” than a true “Peanut Butter Bacon Shake.”

The shake’s texture, though, was sublime; it hit my sweet spot of being thick enough that I had to work a little to drink it through the straw but not too thick that a spoon was required. And aside from its outsized presence, I don’t have any complaints about the vanilla ice cream.

Overall, this isn’t a bad product. It’s just a little odd, not daring enough to scratch the itch for novelty seekers, but maybe still a bit too weird for those seeking a classic milkshake. The few who fall into the grey area in between will likely enjoy it, but let’s just say I’m not holding my breath for this to earn a permanent place on the menu.

Purchased Price: $6.09
Size: Medium
Rating: 6 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: Unavailable at the time of review.