I have to admit, I sometimes get bored by Ben & Jerry's products. I know that sounds like a preposterous statement since Ben & Jerry's is probably one of the most creative ice cream purveyors out there with a myriad of crazy flavor combinations. That said, I think their constant tinkering has lost it's cuteness, for lack of a better word, in my mind and they've just become run of the mill to me...crazy, high calorie flavors seem like they came to someone after a drug episode. Plus, I can pick up so many other products out there for much cheaper that are almost as creative and are certainly less calorie-dense. That would explain why I haven't done many Ben & Jerry's reviews in recent times compared to the early days of this blog, when I did A LOT of reviews of their products. Regardless, I recently found some incredible coupons for their products, so on my next trip to the store, I picked up this pint of Ben & Jerry's Strawberry Cheesecake Ice Cream on sale for $3.50 (plus coupon). It's one of their more boring flavors, but since I don't think I've ever had it before, I thought it was worth a review. This pint is the standard four half-cup sized servings and each serving is 260 calories.
Ben & Jerry's website describes this as "Strawberry Cheesecake Ice Cream with Strawberries & a Thick Graham Cracker Swirl" and I can in fact confirm that all those components were present in this pint. Not in crazy amounts, but in amounts sufficient enough that this was well balanced in it's construction. That cheesecake ice cream also had a strong and wonderful smell of the named treat, so that was a nice olfactory introduction to the pint. The little bits of strawberry had minimal smell, but in my opinion, as long as I could see the bits of them, I was confident that they'd be represented in the flavor.
My confidence was not misplaced because the strawberry bits did do a good job representing themselves in the flavor of this pint. Granted, the cheesecake ice cream was the star of the show as it should have been and I have to say, it did an excellent job mimicking the flavor of the actual cake. It wasn't overly sweet or powerful, but it was a wonderfully smooth flavor. The strawberry bits then added a bit of sweetness and tang on top of that cheesecake ice cream, so it was truly as if I was eating the topping and filling of the cake. That cheesecake experience was then finally balanced out by the graham cracker swirls that were mixed throughout the pint. While would have preferred that they were represented with bigger chunks, their graininess did provide a nice difference in mouthfeel for each spoonful that I encountered them. They did have a very slight hint of that graham flavor that the monks intended when they invented graham crackers too, so that was good as well.
Buy It or Fly By It? In the end, this was an extremely safe and not really all that original flavor combination from Ben & Jerry's, but that is more than fine because this was one tasty treat and that gets it a BUY IT rating. Sometimes the safe route can be the best route and that was the case with this pint flavor. If you don't feel like a drug induced hazed and want something traditional to pick up and don't mind the calorie load, this is a good option.
 |
| BUY IT!! |
No comments:
Post a Comment