Thursday, March 29, 2012

Review: Starbucks Caramel Macchiato Ice Cream


Love them or hate them, Starbucks is always sure to generate a strong reaction from just about anyone that you could come into contact with.  Personally, I like their coffee.  Granted, I only order coffee and not any of the flavored drinks, so I'm not the most knowledgeable person on the subject.  That said, I do think they are slightly overpriced, but I'm willing to pay it for what I feel is pretty solid coffee.  So, when I saw that my local Meijer was offering these pints for essentially free (actually $1.97) to clear shelf space for Ben & Jerry's new Greek frozen yogurt, I had to give this Caramel Macchiato flavor a try and see how their coffee products translated into ice cream.  Each pint contains four servings at 240 calories per serving and also contains caffeine (it is coffee ice cream, DUH!), by the way.



Based on the product description, this ice cream is made up of "Swirled coffee and vanilla ice creams with ribbons of golden caramel."   When you look into the pint, you can definitely tell they've got the swirl aspect nailed because they coffee and vanilla ice crams are definitely swirled throughout the pint, so at least they've nailed that part of the product description.  I can also confirm that the caramel ribbons were there as well (that's a spot of caramel directly in the middle of the picture).  The caramel wasn't swirled as well as the ice creams, but it was definitely plentiful, so in terms of meeting what they advertised, Starbucks was ahead of the ball on this one.

As for taste, I guess it wasn't too bad if you can deal with coffee ice cream.  The vanilla ice cream, while physically in the pint, was essentially flavorless because the coffee flavored ice cream overtook the entire pint.  I'm not sure how to describe this coffee flavor ice cream, other than the fact that it tasted strong like coffee.  Not quite Pike Place Roast like you'd get at the store, but it definitely had that roasted flavor that you'd expect from a cup of coffee.  The caramel swirl was thick and gooey, but since the coffee flavoring was so strong, any sort of sweetness that I may have been able to get from it was cancelled out.  Still, the addition of the gooeyness to the icy feel of the two ice creams was a nice change-up in how this one felt as you were going through it.  Still, even with the nice gooey factor of they caramel, I'm not sure I can get down with the coffee flavored ice cream.  It is just all so weird to me.

Buy It or Fly By It?  I guess this depends on how you feel about coffee ice cream.  Personally, I'm not a huge fan and I can't get on board with it, so I'll give this a FLY BY IT rating.  It's not that this was a bad product, because it wasn't, but it's just a matter of personal tastes.  Coffee is fine as a drink (and a morning/late night lifesaver), but as an ice cream, it just doesn't work for me.  If you think coffee flavored ice cream would work for you, definitely give it a shot.

FLY BY IT!!

2 comments:

  1. Love this. I like coffee flavored ice cream a lot better than coffee itself. I really don't like hot drinks though.

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  2. I absolutely love this ice cream, but I do like coffee-flavored ice cream. The caramel is thick and gooey, like you said, and that's what makes this stand out from other caramel ice creams - that, and that it's the only caramel ice cream I can find that doesn't also have chocolate. Sadly, I found your column because I'm trying to figure out why all the stores in my podunk town (3 hourse west of Indy) seem to have stopped selling Starbucks Ice Cream.

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