Friday, June 29, 2012

Review: Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia Ice Cream


I've spent so much time reviewing the "bizarre" Ben & Jerry's flavors that I figure I should taking it upon myself at some point to review some of what I'm going to call their standard flavors (Americone Dream, etc.).  I'm going to call these their standard flavors because they are so mainstream that they offer them in mini cup form, ice cream bar form, etc.  Cherry Garcia is one of those flavors as I've seen it in both bar and mini cup form in my stores.  For reference purposes, I picked up this pint on sale for $3.00 at CVS and each serving of the four serving pint consists of 240 calories, which puts it at the medium to low end of the calorie scale when comparing it to other Ben & Jerry's ice creams.



As you can see on the label of this one, Cherry Garcia is made up of cherry ice cream with cherries and fudge flakes.  Looking at the photo above, you can definitely tell that both the cherries and fudge flakes are in the ice cream.  The color of the ice cream color is only slightly off-white though, so at first glance, you'd think you were looking at vanilla ice cream and wouldn't know it was cherry unless you actually read the description first.  The cherries mixed throughout the pint were quite robust and soft, so that was a pleasant and unexpected surprise (I was expecting small, dried cherries).  The fudge flakes mixed throughout the pint varied in size.  Some seemed like they were the size of Cadillacs in their enormousness, while others were just little flecks.  I appreciated that as well as it allowed the fudge flakes to be spread throughout the pint and you were never really without at least some representation of fudge in each spoonful.

When tasting this, there's nothing that is really going to knock your socks off, but that is not at all an insult.  It's a safe, semi-sweet appetizing flavor and sometimes, that's all you are really looking for in an ice cream.  The cherry ice cream flavor was faint, but noticeable.  Being that I had a bad experience with a cherry birthday cake as a child (the cherry flavor was too strong and it ended up making me nauseous), I appreciated the faint flavor of the cherry ice cream.  What the ice cream lacked in strong cherry flavor, the cherry chunks spread throughout the pint more than made up for that.  Every time I came across a cherry chunk, I was enjoyed the sweetness and chewiness that they brought to the table.  The fudge flakes, on the other hand, brought no chewiness to the pint, but that was to be expected.  They were hard and added a fun crunch to the pint to counteract the softness of the cherry chunks.  The well-distributed flakes were also sweet, but not in an overpowering way.

Buy It or Fly By It?  It's not difficult to see why Ben & Jerry's has used this flavor in so many different products, because it is a good, safe flavor and for that reason, it gets a BUY IT rating.  If you want a comforting ice cream treat and don't want to have your brain confused by having flavors coming at you from every different direction, this is a great choice for you and you will not regret it.  I know I didn't.

BUY IT!!
I might be the only one that feels good about this flavor because my friends at On Second Scoop and The Ice Cream Informant gave it less than stellar ratings.

3 comments:

  1. cherry garcia is so delicious. One of my favorite flavors of ice cream ever.

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  2. I really want to try this but we don't get half of these flavours in the UK :( reading all the reviews you have done on all these different Ben & Jerry's is making me very jealous lol

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  3. I also bought this flavor, "Cherry Garcia" at a CVS here in Lehigh Acres,Fl. It was not what I used to buy and very disappointed lately when I purchase. I used to LOVE this ice cream and flavor but quality control has severely dipped. Once again at CVS I got a freezer burned, awful, no to little cherry having version(cherries used to be plentiful,robust and many). Until they fix this I'm staying away from this pricey indulgence.

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