Review: Ben & Jerry's Vanilla Heath Bar Crunch Ice Cream

I was reading an article in my local Indianapolis paper recently about how a local bakery was starting to make its own ice cream to sell at their stores.  The owner was going through the process of how long it took them to make their own flavors and said that the hardest flavor for him to come up with a recipe for was vanilla.  He said this one took him the longest because all ice creams manufacturers are judged by how good their vanilla ice cream is because not only is it the most popular flavor of ice cream there is, but also because it is the base for so many other flavor combinations.  I was reminded of that when I picked up this pint of Ben & Jerry's Vanilla Heath Bar Crunch Ice Cream at Meijer for $2.50 to add to my Ben & Jerry's collection.  This is a basic flavor that has been out for quite a long time, but it's one I've never looked at on the blog and since I've never really had the chance to review what is essentially their unaltered vanilla-flavored ice cream before, I feel this review is very fitting.  The pint is the typical four half-cup servings of ice cream and each serving is 280 calories.

While the intro to this post may have been long, the description of this pint of ice cream will not be.  I've had Heath bars a thousand times before they are basically toffee covered in a chocolate coating.  The candy bar pieces were amply spread across the pint and they were quite large as well, which was actually nice.  As for the vanilla ice cream, it was the off-white color of a typical vanilla and had a nice vanilla-y smell.  So, this one had vanilla and it had Heath bars.  Check and check.

Told you that last paragraph was going to be short, didn't I?  Anyway, I'll quickly discuss the candy portion of this pint...it tasted just like Heath candy bars taste.  Buttery, chocolatey, rich and sweet, it was all wonderful.  They were also quite crunch, just like the candy bar (DUH), so the crunch portion of this pint's name was well covered.  As for the vanilla ice cream, it tasted like a wonderful vanilla ice cream.  It was moderately sweet with a mild and extremely pleasant taste of vanilla.  Basically, it was everything that a person could want from a vanilla ice cream.  Great individual flavor, but also a great base to showcase other flavors.  The showcase flavor in this case was the large Heath candy bar pieces and the vanilla did a good job being a wonderful supporting actor to those chunks throughout the pint.  They worked well together, just as was intended.

Buy It or Fly By It?  There was nothing unexpected about this pint of ice cream, but in the case of such a basic recipe, that is a good thing.  What I got here was a very tasty pint of ice cream of a basic flavor combination and for that it gets a hearty BUY IT rating.  Ben & Jerry's can tend to go off the deep end with their flavor combinations sometimes, but they really hit a home run with this basic flavor combination as it is everything anyone could ever want it to be.