Review: Ben & Jerry's Boston Cream Pie Ice Cream

I've covered my love of all things Boston Cream Pie here before when I did a review on the JELL-O Boston Cream Pie flavored pudding, so I won't go into that again.  In order to try to continue my Boston Cream Pie lovin', I picked up Ben & Jerry's Boston Cream Pie ice cream offering into the market recently at Meijer on sale for $3.00 for a pint.  Each pint contains four servings (laughable) and each serving contains 250 calories, so compared to other Ben & Jerry's offerings, this one is reasonably low on the calorie scale.  Of course, since it's a "premium" ice cream, its calorie load is higher than most, but hey, you can't win them all.

Anyway, Ben & Jerry's describes this one of consisting of Boston Cream Pie ice cream (?!) with yellow cake pieces, fudge flakes and swirls of pastry cream.  It's pretty much a frozen Boston Cream Pie and that's what you'd expect.  If you are wondering what Boston Cream Pie ice cream is, well, it looks like vanilla to me.  As for the other ingredients, I can confirm that they are in there (the picture can confirm this too), but they aren't really all that plentiful.  The fudge flakes are small and sporadically spread throughout the pint.  The cake pieces, while somewhat sizeable, are only available in sporadic clumps and not really spread evenly.  The only thing that does any reasonable amount of dispersion throughout the entire pint is the pastry cream (think marshmallow cream) and while it is spread evenly, there is not a whole lot of it.  All in all, this seems like a pretty lame visual attempt at a frozen Boston Cream Pie.

It's also a fairly lame taste attempt at a Boston Cream Pie too.  When you are able to get some of the mix-ins, it's okay, I guess, but certainly not all that good.  The cake pieces, while soft are so sporadically available that it's almost like they are missing.  Same thing with the fudge flakes:  crunchy, but so sporadically available that they are essentially a waste.  The pastry cream, on the other hand, is readily available and when you encounter it, it is extremely sweet as you'd expect if you've ever had a Boston Cream Pie before.  Oh yeah, one more thing...the "Boston Cream Pie ice cream"...not really sure how to describe this one.  I guess the best way for me to describe it to say would be vanilla that is hulked up with some extra sweetness.

Buy It or Fly By It?  I think I've proven through this blog that I like sweets, but this Boston Cream Pie ice cream is too sweet even for my taste so FLY BY IT.  The sweetness of the Boston Cream Pie ice cream is the base layer of sweetness and that is then compounded by the sweet pastry cream and the sweet fudge chunks.  The only thing in here that isn't overly sweet is the cake pieces and those have some inherent sweetness itself.  This ice cream is one of those things that unless you have a tolerance for sweetness built up, it's going to make your teeth and possibly stomach hurt after eating it.  So, all in all, it's not that it's bad, but it's also not good either.  Too bad to see such a failure on one of my favorite things in the world.

FLY BY IT!!

FYI, there are several other reviews on this flavor out there too.  Here is a sampling of some of those if you want to check out some other opinions:

*On Second Scoop (kind of the same feelings as me)
*Daily Macro (loves it)
*The Ice Cream Snob (same feelings as me)
*Does It Hit The Spot? (loves it)