Review: Ben & Jerry's Spectacular Speculoos Cookie Core Ice Cream

So yeah, I eat a lot of Ben & Jerry's.  I've had over thirty flavors that I've done reviews for on this blog, but in the grand scheme of their flavors over the years, that's not a lot.  For one guy though, I think eating that many would probably put me outside the norm.  Comes with the territory as a reviewer, I guess.  Anyway, to add to the number of flavors that I've tried, I picked up a pint of this Ben & Jerry's Spectacular Speculoos Cookie Core Ice Cream on sale at Kroger for $2.99.  Each pint contains the customary four half-cup servings and each serving is a not-so-healthy 290 calories.

Also, I went into this pint thinking I had no idea what a Speculoos cookie was.  Apparently, I was wrong and I've reviewed something with speculoos before in a Haagen-Dazs review (oohh, a competitor!).  I guess it's hard to remember things when you eat such a variety and have done over one thousand reviews.  In my very weak defense, it was over two years ago and speculoos weren't even part of the name of the flavor.

Even though their description is really basic, I'm going to save the keystrokes and just steal it from Ben & Jerry's website.  This pint is "Dark Caramel & Vanilla Ice Creams with Speculoos Cookies & a Speculoos Cookie Butter Core."  As you can see above and what sort of surprised me was how dense the cookie butter core was.  It was also quite thick and gelatinous.  I'm sure if I had let this pint settle to room temperature for a few minutes, it would have become more gooey.  But, as I said in my last Ben & Jerry's review, when I walk to the freezer to get ice cream, I WANT IT NOW!  I'm not willing to wait on things softening up.  That said, the remainder of the pint was somewhat soft (for Ben & Jerry's), so that was a nice change of pace.  As for the speculoos cookies, they were large, ample and well spread.  I love my add-ins, so I can definitely appreciate that.  One more note, I'm not sure how this becomes dark caramel ice cream.  I guess the coloring was darker than the typical caramel ice cream they make, so maybe that makes it dark.  I really don't know.

Okay, first the ice creams.  The vanilla was vanilla, although Ben & Jerry's vanilla is more delicious than most.  The dark caramel ice cream was definitely dense, but it wasn't particularly sweet.  I guess that's actually what dark means and it's more than just the color change.  Chalk that up as one more thing I've learned through this blog.  Next to taste was the core and boy oh boy was it good.  Cinnamon-y and gooey, with a buttery taste.  Oh my.  Decadence would be a great word to describe it.  The cookies were the final component and they too were delicious.  Crunchy and packed again with more cinnamon flavor.

Buy It or Fly By It?  This was seriously delicious and I loved every single spoonful, so this gets a BUY IT rating.  I may not have remembered speculoos before, but I'll remember them now because they are darn good.  Anyway, wrapping everything up together was quite an experience.  Gooey, sticky, spicy, cooling, rich...this had it all.  Excellent new flavor addition to the Ben & Jerry's flavor catalog.

BUY IT!!