Review: Blue Bell Orange Swirl Ice Cream

I recently visited a  local Brewfest and let's just say that I enjoyed the "tasting" opportunities that the festival presented me.  I enjoyed them so much that I had a throat that felt very raw the next day, so I went out to my local Marsh store to grab a bit of something cold that would make my throat feel better and that led me to pick up a Blue Bell flavor that I had not reviewed previously.  Upon reviewing their website, I saw that this pint of Blue Bell Orange Swirl Ice Cream is a seasonal offering, so that would go a long way toward describing why I've never seen it before.  As with all pints, this one contained four half-cup servings and each serving was a fairly limiting 140 calories, so it's not truly a belt buster. 

When you reading the product description on the front of this pint, you can see that Blue Bell has put together something that is pretty interesting here.  It's a base of vanilla ice cream with a swirl of orange sherbet mixed throughout.  Perhaps my head has been buried in the sand for years, but I'm not sure that I've ever seen ice cream and sherbet mixed together in one product.  Based on my picture above, you can clearly see both components, although the ratios are a little off from what I found throughout the container.  The sherbet had a strong and "fresh" smell to it, so everything about this made me anxious to dive in, even though this seemingly is the combination of two very basic flavors.

I first went in for a taste of the orange sherbet and it was everything I hoped it would be.  It was bright, citrus-y, airy and tasted exactly like every well done orange sherbet that I've had in my life.  Next was the vanilla ice cream and it was also well done.  It was creamy, had a sweet twinge to it and also tasted strongly of vanilla.  Again, just like every well done vanilla ice cream in my life.  Obviously, the last thing to do was mix the two together and what I got was an interesting flavor profile.  The sherbet maintained it's bright flavors, but they were tamed a bit by the ice cream.  The ice cream also added a creamy component to the airy sherbet, so what I got when added the two together was a semi-creamy and bright punch of flavors.

Buy It or Fly By It?  This was just what the doctor ordered for my self-inflicted sore throat, so it gets a BUY IT rating.  It had great ice cream flavor, but also had great sherbet brightness to it and the combination of those two made for something that turned out to be an enjoyable summer-like treat that I was enjoying on an early fall day.  It actually made me yearn for early summer, but I guess I'll just have to settle for this in the mean time as summer is still many, many months away.

BUY IT!!