Friday, January 6, 2012

Review: Dean's Denali Caramel Caribou Ice Cream


I've had bad luck with Dean's so far.  My last product review was of their Country Churn Low Fat Denali Moose Tracks flavor and it was an abysmal failure.  Since I had a coupon for Dean's again, I was willing to give them one more shot with this Denali Caramel Caribou flavored ice cream.  As with all Denali products, the recipe blend is theirs but they license it to individual dairys to produced under their own label (in this case, it is Dean's obviously).

Standing in the freezer section and looking at the ingredients that this contained (toffee flavored ice cream, caramel cups and a caramel swirl), I knew I was hooked.  Caramel is delicious on its own and mixing that with toffee sounded like an intriguing and delicious combination.  FYI, this one was on sale at Meijer for $3.00  for a 1.5 quart container (I had a 55 cents off coupon to lower that) and each serving in the container (about thirteen) contains 160 calories.



When I opened up the container, I was not greeted with what you see above.  All I saw was white ice cream and maybe a little trickle of caramel.  A quarter of the way into the container, all I saw was white ice cream, one or two caramel cups and slightly more caramel swirl.  Halfway into the container, the caramel cups and caramel swirl increased a little bit more, but it was still not what I would describe as plentiful.  In fact, I had to get two thirds of a way through the container before I could find a picture that was suitable for publication and that's the picture above.  If I have to go through two thirds of a container to get an acceptable amount of mix-ins and swirl, that is truly pathetic.  Frankly though, I should have expected that since I had the same issue with the Country Churn Low Fat Denali Moose Tracks ice cream in my last Dean's review.

Also like the last Dean's review, the taste was underwhelming.  For something that promised to have toffee flavor ice cream, this one fooled me because all I tasted was vanilla with a very slight difference in taste.  I was expecting at least some toffee flavor, but I got none.  Pathetic.  As for the caramel swirl and caramel cups, they were about what you'd expect...when I could find them.  The cups were hard and had a nice chocolate and caramel blend, but weren't particularly outstanding.  The caramel swirl was gooey and added a nice compliment to the ice cream in the rare spoonfuls that I was able to include it.  In fact, if I had to attach a ratio to this entire container, I would say that 95% of it was "toffee" (read:  vanilla) ice cream and the remaining five percent was the mix-ins.  I might even be being generous by saying five percent too...I guess I'm a charitable guy.

Buy It or Fly Buy It?  FLY BY IT.  In fact, run past this one if you are considering it.  Awful, horrible, terrible representation of what could have been an awesome ice cream when you look at the ingredients.  I know this, Dean's, fool me once with the first review and it is shame on you.  Fool me twice with this review and it is shame on me.  There hopefully won't be a third time.

FLY BY IT!!

3 comments:

  1. How disappointing! The box looked so yummy.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Denali Ice Cream always jips you on the mix ins. Which is very disappointing because I love this flavor when I can actually get a caramel cup, caramel swirl and ice cream in one bit. Sometimes I buy separate caramel candies to add to it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Cascade glacier brand Dinali Carmel caribou has a good amount of mix ins. The drawback is the texture: grainy. Is that normal for this flavor? Or just a bad batch?

    ReplyDelete

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