Ben & Jerry's UK - Baked Alaska

Baked Alaska - Vanilla Ice Cream with Marshmallow Swirls and White Chocolatey Polar Bears

I was still in London and after writing the Satisfy My Bowl review, I thought I was done with ice cream for the trip.  Freezer cases here are so small and there is usually room for only three flavours.  Everyone seems to have Phish Food, Half Baked and Chocolate Fudge Brownie and nothing else.  But, I was wondering around the Marylebone neighborhood one day and found myself inspecting a freezer case in a random convenience store (it is hard to turn off the freezer-case inspection instinct) and lo and behold I found a different flavour!  And not just a renamed American flavor either.  I had never seen this combination of ingredients in a Ben & Jerry's flavor before.  So, I scooped it up.  I begged the clerk for a plastic spoon and he obliged.  I ended up eating the pint in the lovely nearby Regents Park which explains the non-standard photos which are attached.  

Baked Alaska is an all-white pint -- a vanilla base with marshmallow and white chocolate fill-ins.  So, opening the pint, it came as no surprise that all I saw was white.  Digging into the pint, you primarily taste vanilla.  Marshmallow swirls have been seen to have two types of effects in ice cream flavors.  It can make a pint gooier as with Phish Food or S'mores flavors, or it can give a pint a taffy-like consistency as the Save Our Swirled flavor.  Here, it did the taffy thing.  Looking at the side of the pint, you see overheated polar bears which matches the climate-change awareness theme of the Save Our Swirled flavor.  At first, I thought this might be the British summer flavour for climate change but checking the internet when I got home I found that Baked Alaska has been around in the UK since 2012.  Dispersed throughout the pint were white chocolatey polar bears.  They were very cute (see attached photo) and provided a crunchy texture, but as mentioned in previous reviews, white chocolate does not have a very strong flavor.

All in all, this is really just a slight twist on vanilla ice cream.  Ben & Jerry's does have a Vanilla flavor but I never think of plain flavors when I think of Ben & Jerry's -- it is all about the interesting combinations of fill-ins for me.  So if you like vanilla but don't just want a plain ice cream -- and you are in the UK -- then give this pint a try.