Tag: Ice Cream

REVIEW: Haagen-Dazs Trio Salted Caramel & Chocolate Ice Cream

Sean 4 Comments

Ketchup, mustard, and mayo.

Jordan, Pippen, and Rodman.

Destiny’s Child.

Nirvana.

The Marx Brothers.

Our society is made up of so many good trios, why not shove that logic into a container of ice cream? The master-churners at Haagen-Dazs have our backs with their new line of creamy crack simply dubbed “Trio.” The Salted Caramel Chocolate version combines layers of crispy Belgian chocolate with salted caramel ice cream and chocolate ice cream. Let’s triple dip.

Digging into the psuedo-pint makes a distinctly unique crunching sound as my spoon breaks through the layers of chocolate inside. The ice cream is of typical Haagen-Dazs high quality – the mellow chocolate and subdued salted caramel make sense to combine in a flavor like this, but they ultimately kind of cancel each other out.

It’s always a risk to mix two ice cream bases, and here some of the subtle nuances of the caramel get washed over by the chocolate; which is a shame, because when you isolate the caramel on its own it’s a pretty tasty flavor.

The star of the show, the Belgian chocolate, is kind of thin; actually thinner than a lot of chocolate chunks or Ben & Jerry’s “fudge flakes,” and doesn’t add as much of a thick texture as I would like. The effect is much more similar to just a standard chocolate mix-in than a thick layer of chocolate, and in that regard the taste is much less impressive than the visual.

It actually tastes a lot like one of Haagen-Dazs’ ice cream bars got smashed up and squeezed into a carton, without that disgusting wooden stick that makes my teeth cringe.

The flavor combo between the two ice creams and layers of milky chocolate is a lot like eating a Rolo, but less sweet and grainy. I like Rolo’s, but I’m not usually interested in more than two or three, and that’s the same way I feel about this Trio. The flavors are good but lose their intrigue quickly and become a pretty single noted experience with the caramel nearly disappearing against all of the chocolate.

Overall, it eats much more like a chocolate chocolate chip than an ice cream with salted caramel, and the flavor would have been much more effective with a vanilla ice cream to let the caramel actually come through and have any real impact. It’s a well made product but the flavor distribution and execution could use some work.

(Nutrition Facts – 1/2 cup (104g) – 300 calories, 180 calories from fat, 20 grams of fat, 13 grams of saturated fat, 0.5 grams of trans fat, 75 milligrams of cholesterol, 80 milligrams of sodium, 26 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fiber, 24 grams of sugar, and 5 grams of protein..)

Purchased Price: $3.99
Size: 14 oz.
Purchased at: Safeway
Rating: 6 out of 10
Pros: Exciting crunch sound effects. Good quality ice cream. Shoving a Haagen-Dazs bar into a pint.
Cons: Flavors get muddled. Caramel gets lost. Chocolate layers should be thicker. Concept better than execution.

REVIEW: Ben & Jerry’s Salted Caramel Almond Ice Cream

Marvo

Ben & Jerry’s Salted Caramel Almond Ice Cream

Ben & Jerry’s Salted Caramel Almond is an exclusive Safeway flavor (plus its sister stores) and, to be honest, it’s not a particularly exciting exclusive flavor.

While Walmart gets Cotton Candy, Confetti Cake, and another flavor that probably starts with the letter C, and Target gets Blonde Ambition, Berry Voluntary, and another flavor that probably starts with the letter B, Safeway stores get a safe flavor with a safe name, which I guess is appropriate for a chain called Safeway.

The safe flavor features safe vanilla bean ice cream with safe roasted almond slivers, safe fudge flakes, and a safe salted caramel swirl.

The vanilla bean ice cream is a solid base, it’s creamy, has a pleasant vanilla flavor, and there are vanilla bean specks. Although those could be tiny bits of the fudge flakes, which taste like the fudge flakes we all know and love from the dozen or so other flavors that have them.

As for the roasted almond slivers, they’re less like whole cross-sections of the nut and more like whole cross-section of the nut smashed into pieces by a hammer. Their flavor isn’t too noticeable while eating the ice cream, but very noticeable as they stick to the nooks and crannies of your molars after the rest of the ice cream has gone down your esophagus. The salted caramel swirl has a saltiness that’s stronger when I lick my lips while eating the ice cream than when the ice cream is in my mouth.

Ben & Jerry’s Salted Caramel Almond Ice Cream 2

There’s almost enough of each ingredient that you can get a bit of everything in every spoonful. With each scoop it’s a textural orchestra of gooey, creamy, snappy, and crunchy and a flavor orchestra of buttery, sweet, salty, and nutty. It’s like eating the top of a Nestle Drumstick beaten with a better ingredient stick.

It’s hard to go wrong with the combination of vanilla ice cream, chocolate, caramel, and nuts. It’s like combining rainbows, glitter, and a unicorn. With either of those combos, you know you’re going to have a good time. And while I had fun with Ben & Jerry’s Salted Caramel Almond Ice Cream, it wasn’t too exciting and tasted like something I’ve had before.

It was a safe fun, like hitting a piñata with a foam bat, without a blindfold, and doing it in the virtual world with VR goggles.

(Nutrition Facts – 1/2 cup – 290 calories, 150 calories from fat, 17 grams of fat, 10 grams of saturated fat, 0.5 grams of trans fat, 70 milligrams of cholesterol, 140 milligrams of sodium, 28 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 26 grams of sugar, and 5 grams of protein.)

Purchased Price: $5.99
Size: 1 pint
Purchased at: Safeway
Rating: 6 out of 10
Pros: It’s like eating the top of a Nestle Drumstick that’s been beaten with a better ingredient stick. Safe flavor; it’s not weird or offensive. Lots of different flavors and textures.
Cons: Safe flavor; not as exciting as exclusive flavors at Walmart and Target. Almond slivers are almond bits. Fudge flakes seem to be in EVERYTHING.

REVIEW: Ben & Jerry’s Oat of this Swirled Ice Cream

Marvo 4 Comments

Ben & Jerry's Oat of this Swirled Ice Cream

Many people know Ben & Jerry’s for their clever flavor names. Take a commonly used phrase, change a word or syllable into an ingredient’s name, and BAM, a new ice cream flavor name is born.

Empower MINT.

Clusterfluff.

Cake My Day.

Americone Dream.

Karamel Sutra Core.

Oh, I could spend all day listing them and confusing my computer’s spell check.

But the brand has done it again with Oats of this Swirled Ice Cream. So is this ice cream out of this world? Let’s find oat.

The flavor features buttery brown sugar ice cream with fudge flakes and oatmeal cinnamon cookie swirls.

Ben & Jerry's Oat of this Swirled Ice Cream Top

The ice cream base has a mild buttery flavor, but it was hard to taste the butteriness by itself because it seemed like cinnamon permeated through the ice cream. That reads like a complaint, but I assure you it’s not. Cinnamon and butter is a combination I love seeing together, like Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. I would buy the ice cream base without anything else, if Ben & Jerry’s sold it.

While the ice cream itself is great, what makes this flavor wonderful is the oatmeal cinnamon cookie swirls. It has a fine gritty texture that’s a pleasant contrast to the creamy ice cream. However, its flavor makes me think more of a snickerdoodle than an oatmeal cinnamon cookie. Again, that reads like a complaint, but I assure you it’s not because I love this swirl. But if you can taste the oats, let me know because I don’t taste or see them.

Of course, seeing oats is a good thing and a bad thing. I don’t want to see the oats because that’ll mean dealing with the chewy texture of the oats, but at the same time seeing them will help justify in my mind that maybe I’m getting some benefit from eating ice cream with half my daily saturated fat in one serving.

As for the fudge flakes, their snap added a third texture to the ice cream and there were a lot of them. When I got a spoonful with the buttery ice cream base, cinnamon swirl, and the fudge, I thought it tasted more like a spiceless Mexican hot chocolate than any cookie. Once again, that reads like a complaint, but I assure you it’s not because this pint is wonderful and really hard to put down.

(Nutrition Facts – 1/2 cup – 310 calories, 180 calories from fat, 20 grams of fat, 10 grams of saturated fat, 0.5 grams of trans fat, 70 milligrams of cholesterol, 110 milligrams of sodium, 31 grams of carbohydrates, less than 1 gram of fiber, 28 grams of sugar, and 4 grams of protein.)

Purchased Price: $5.99
Size: 1 pint
Purchased at: Safeway
Rating: 9 out of 10
Pros: Ice cream base and swirl taste more like a snickerdoodle than cinnamon oatmeal cookie. All three parts taste more like a spiceless Mexican hot chocolate. Clever name. Hard flavor to put down.
Cons: Don’t get the oats. Doesn’t bring an cinnamon oatmeal cookie to mind. Having to teach my computer’s spell check Ben & Jerry’s flavor names.

REVIEW: Ben & Jerry’s Urban Bourbon Ice Cream

Marvo 5 Comments

Ben & Jerry's Urban Bourbon Ice Cream

Despite having bourbon in its name, there’s no alcohol in Ben & Jerry’s Urban Bourbon Ice Cream. That’s a good thing because if it did and parents unknowingly fed their children the ice cream, I imagine some of the kids will become emotional drunks and start shouting things like “Why don’t you love me, dad?” or “I love you, Dora the Explorer!”

Some of you might think not having alcohol in Urban Bourbon takes the fun out of the flavor, but there’s still a lot of fun to be had. The new Ben & Jerry’s concoction has burnt caramel ice cream with almonds, fudge flakes, and bourbon caramel swirls.

See. Fun.

The bourbon caramel swirl was the best part of the pint and I enjoyed it so much that, even though I don’t drink, I’d drink it if it had alcohol. Now I’m not writing this to make me sound sophisticated, but I thought the bourbon had a nice woodsy flavor and it paired marvelously with the gooey caramel. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must tend to my collection of exotic birds.

Ben & Jerry's Urban Bourbon Ice Cream 2

Speaking of great pairings, the swirl goes well with the burnt caramel ice cream. Although, I have to admit I’m not sure I taste the ice cream’s burntness. Instead it had a normal caramel flavor that’s almost too mild. Although that’s good because if it had a strong caramel flavor, it combined with the caramel in the swirl would’ve overwhelmed the bourbon flavor.

The almond slivers added nothing flavor-wise. They had a coconut-like texture, which was kind of a turnoff for me. But, fortunately, my pint didn’t have a lot of them. However, there were A LOT of fudge flakes. Perhaps too many. At first, they were fine. But at a point I felt they got between me and my favorite ingredient. In the end, I shoving them to the side just so I could be alone with the not-burnt caramel ice cream and swirl.

While I mostly enjoyed the ice cream, I could understand how the bourbon caramel swirl’s slight astringent taste might turn off some. If that happens, I’ll gladly take yours from you because my pint didn’t have enough of them. This made me as angry as a bar patron who got cut off by the bartender because they’re so drunk that they’re yelling things like “Why don’t you love me, dad?”

Of course, your pints may vary. But if it doesn’t, feel free to yell, “Why don’t you love me, Ben & Jerry’s?”

(Nutrition Facts – 1/2 cup – 300 calories, 150 calories from fat, 17 grams of fat, 9 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 60 milligrams of cholesterol, 70 milligrams of sodium, 33 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 27 grams of sugar, and 5 grams of protein.)

Purchased Price: $5.99
Size: 1 pint
Purchased at: Safeway
Rating: 7 out of 10
Pros: The bourbon caramel swirl. The combination of burnt caramel ice cream and bourbon caramel swirl. The mild flavor of the ice cream not getting in the way of the swirl. Using “woodsy” in a review. Dora the Explorer.
Cons: Don’t taste the burnt part of the burnt caramel ice cream. My pint didn’t have a lot of the swirl (your pint may vary). Perhaps too many fudge flakes in my pint. Children accidentally consuming alcohol. Super loud super drunks.

REVIEW: Dreyer’s Limited Edition Toll House Peanut Butter Cookie Dough Ice Cream

Sean 5 Comments

Dreyer's Limited Edition Toll House Peanut Butter Cookie Dough Ice Cream

Light ice cream. Some people shiver and cringe at the very notion. Some people praise it and buy it all the time. Me? I’m somewhere in the middle.

Light ice cream takes up that middle space in between Halo Top and super premium pints or trips to the scoop shop. I appreciate it for what it is, go in with real expectations, and enjoy.

I don’t follow too closely to what Dreyer’s Slow Churned line is up to, but when they announced a Peanut Butter Cookie Dough flavor that would clock in at 120 calories and only four grams of fat per serving I was intrigued and had to put my PB-expertise to the test. The limited edition Nestle Toll House-branded flavor combines sweet cream light ice cream with peanut butter cookie dough pieces and a peanut butter swirl.

Dreyer's Limited Edition Toll House Peanut Butter Cookie Dough Ice Cream 2

The sweet cream ice cream base is generally unremarkable. It’s soft and creamy with a blanketed nondescript sweetness that acts much more as a texture than a flavor. No buttery notes, vanilla, or rich cream flavor can be found, but for a light ice cream it definitely holds its end of the bargain being a smooth and melty backdrop to the container’s mix-ins.

Dreyer's Limited Edition Toll House Peanut Butter Cookie Dough Ice Cream 3

Fortunately for the ice cream, it doesn’t need to work too hard because there is more peanut butter swirl than I expected and the nut butter fiend in me is definitely satisfied. Although the ribbons themselves are thin, there is a solid amount of peanut butter laced throughout every bite, occasionally even coming across a massive hardened chunk of PB that explodes with salty smoothness.

Dreyer's Limited Edition Toll House Peanut Butter Cookie Dough Ice Cream 4

The peanut butter itself is sweet and creamy, much like JIF or Skippy, and combines really well with the sweet cream to create a fluffy peanut-y experience that is much better than what I anticipated from a Slow Churned product.

The biggest issue with this flavor, unsurprisingly, is the cookie dough itself. While the taste of the dough is actually pretty good, with a unique deep fatty roasted peanut flavor and solid dough grittiness, there isn’t nearly enough of it and the pieces are quite small. Throughout the course of eating around a half of the container and digging around to try and find more, I came across less than 15 pieces of dough, which hardly lives up to its prominent placement in the flavor’s title.

Due to the low calorie count of the Slow Churned line I kind of expected this since the description and macros just seemed too good to be true. If they had to sacrifice somewhere the dough makes the most sense because if they had pulled back on the peanut butter swirl itself the flavor wouldn’t have come together at all.

(Nutrition Facts – 1/2 cup (63g) – 120 calories, 35 calories from fat, 4 grams of fat, 1.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 5 milligrams of cholesterol, 55 milligrams of sodium, 18 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fiber, 13 grams of sugar, and 3 grams of protein.)

Purchased Price: $4.99
Size: 1.5 qts.
Purchased at: Safeway
Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: Surprising amount of peanut butter swirl for a light ice cream. Fluffy creamy base. tasty nutty robust dough pieces. Solid nutritional tradeoff.
Cons: Not enough cookie dough pieces. Very basic nondescript sweet flavor in the ice cream base.