A former employer of mine was based out of Iowa and one of my former co-workers had mentioned on conference calls that her job in high school and college was working at the Blue Bunny factory because that was her hometown. So, I've known about Blue Bunny ice cream for some time, but I've avoided reviewing it for two reasons. First, it is seemingly never on sale and when it is, it is still more expensive than other ice creams (at least in my stores), so that is one reason I stayed away. Second, having visited Iowa on a trip for my previous job, I don't like supporting anything that comes out of Iowa because my experience there (and also with that former employer) was so miserable that anything related to the state makes my blood boil. In fact, it makes me so angry that I've been on record as saying I'd rather be in prison than live in Iowa. Yes, I may have anger issues from time to time.
Anyway, a recent sale on Blue Bunny got me over my anger issues and I picked up a 1.75 quart container of this Blue Bunny Chocolate Lovers Triple Chocolate Cake Ice Cream at Kroger for $3.99 and was anxious to give it a try since it is a Chef Duff Goldman product. I like Duff himself, but his Ace of Cakes show used to drive me nuts, but that's neither here nor there. Pointless rambling aside, this comes in at 190 calories per half-cup serving and as always, there's fourteen servings per container since this one is slightly larger, thus the higher cost (I learned something today!).
Since Duff has constructed this one himself (supposedly), this is what Duff's (and not Blue Bunny's) product description entails: "Decadent chocolate ice cream is served up with fudgy chocolate cake pieces and dressed in ribbons of thick, chocolate frosting." I can confirm that all those components were in fact in the container, but there really weren't as many chocolate cake pieces as I would have liked. In fact, if you look at the picture above, I'm not sure you can find many at all and that's after I stirred up the container to get some for the picture. The one thing that you can see a lot of is the ribbons of frosting and being that I often prefer the frosting over the actual cake itself when eating cake (cake can be hit or miss in terms of flavor/moistness, while frosting is almost always on point), the fact that there was a ton of the frosting swirl was something I enjoyed. Being that this was a premium ice cream, the chocolate ice cream itself was creamy and had a smell of strong and dense chocolate.
I do love chocolate, so this container was designed for people like me with its three different chocolate components. With my first spoonful, I decided to try the ice cream itself and it was a rich and hearty chocolate with a strong chocolate taste. In fact, it was one of the stronger tasting frozen chocolate desserts I've had out there, so it was off to a good start. The chocolate frosting was next to taste and while it was sweet, it wasn't nearly as sweet as the kind of frosting that you get on a store bought chocolate cake. I suppose that's a good thing, but it definitely was not what I was expecting. As for the chocolate cake pieces, they were doughy and chewy, but as my picture above hopefully conveys, it's not like they were easy to find and that was wholly disappointing. That being said, when I did find them, I was generally content with how they tasted. Like I said, they were soft and chewy (or "moist" if you prefer that I draw a better comparison to cake) and they added a nice texture breakup to the creamy ice cream and the gooey fudge. All in all, this was a chocolate lovers delight as every single component tasted strongly of chocolate, so you were surely not getting cheated.
Buy It or Fly By It? Despite the fact that this container really only had one note (chocolate; obviously that is what it was going for) and got sort of boring with all the chocolate involved, I'm still going to give this a BUY IT rating because it certainly does a great job filling a chocolate fix. If this was missing one thing though, it needed some sort of crunch. I've seen chocolate cakes with almonds, etc. and maybe this would work a little better if it was designed that way instead of as a basic chocolate cake. Still, Duff did a good job with this container and I'm curious to try some of the other flavors. Hopefully they'll go on sale sometime before the next millennium and I guess this proves, much to my chagrin, that there occasionally is a good thing that comes from Iowa. Ha!
BUY IT!! |
Sounds like we feel about the same on this one. It was decent, but unfortunately, this is the best of the Duff bunch.
ReplyDeleteHearing this is the best of the bunch is sort of depressing. Now I'm in even less of a rush to try the rest out.
DeleteThe I Do, I Do Wedding Cake is so much better than this one. The frosting ribbons were really gross, and there are too many in it. I had a few bites, and the rest went in the trash. With the wedding cake one, I have to stop myself from eating the whole thing at one sitting!
ReplyDeleteI think the red velvet cake is the best
ReplyDeleteI grew up in Iowa. It seems that my feelings about it are pretty similar to yours.
ReplyDelete