Ben & Jerry's - Chocolate Therapy

Chocolate Therapy - Chocolate Ice Cream with Chocolate Cookies & Swirls of Chocolate Pudding Ice Cream

Chocolate Therapy was introduced by Ben & Jerry's in 2005 as yet another permutation on the all-chocolate pint.  I've discussed this in a previous review.  If you're feeling boring, there is just plain Chocolate. If you want gooey, there is Phish Food. If you want chewy, there is Chocolate Fudge Brownie, and if you want crunchy there is New York Super Fudge Chunk.  What type of experience will Chocolate Therapy bring?

Opening the pint, I see the dark brown color of... chocolate!  I guess that's obvious, but no obvious clue as to the swirls and fill-ins that lie below the surface.  Digging into the pint, I see that the chocolate base is not a uniform color -- there two colors of brown marbled together.  This must be the swirls of chocolate pudding ice cream within the chocolate ice cream base.  For me, this difference was mainly visual as I did not taste much difference between the two -- they both tasted like chocolate.  Then within the pint there was the occasional chocolate cookie fill-in.  These were more chunks of cookies and were fairly soft.  To tell you the truth, they seemed more like concentrated bits of chocolate cookie swirl rather than actual cookie pieces -- they were that soft and blended in.  This I did not mind at all as I have written before that the chocolate cookie swirl is one of my favorite swirls.

So, what adjective best fits this pint relative to the ones I used for the other flavors above?  I guess I'd go with 'smooth'.  Did I like the pint?  Hmmm... it didn't really stand out for me relative to the other flavors I mentioned above.  It was chocolatey, no doubt, but it didn't give me that feeling of chocolate overload despite the fact that I ate the whole pint in one sitting.  Still, if you are more of a chocoholic than I am and have more nuanced expectations of chocolate pudding ice cream then go ahead and give this a shot to see if its suited for you.

Ben & Jerry's - Pumpkin Cheesecake

Pumpkin Cheesecake - Pumpkin Cheesecake Ice Cream with a Graham Cracker Swirl

The first day of fall was this week, so seasonal foods featuring pumpkin are starting to pop up.  There are lattes at Starbucks, muffins at the Breadsmith and ice cream at your local supermarket.  Ben & Jerry's has featured it's pumpkin cheesecake flavor every fall since 2007.

Opening the lid, you see the beige color of the pumpkin base along with a darker tan of the graham cracker swirl evident on the very top.  Digging in, you taste a relatively strong pumpkin flavor.  It tasted a lot like pumpkin pie.  The graham cracker swirl sealed it because that tasted like a bit of the crust was swirled into the ice cream.  It did not pack the spicy punch that Aunt Betty's famous mystery bread has, but checking the ingredients I did see cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and cloves listed, but often pumpkin pie is not too spicy either. (Editorial note:  Aunt Betty uses allspice instead of ginger and she asks for just as much cloves as cinnamon so her bread has got quite a kick).  The fact that this was a cheesecake flavor was not all that noticeable.  Perhaps early in the flavor testing process at the Ben & Jerry Laboratories, they found that pure pumpkin ice cream was too much and needed cutting.  Who knows?

I did enjoy this flavor, but I do like pumpkin pie and as we are running out of flavors to review I was eager to jump on a new flavor to review.  So, if you like pumpkin in the fall then give this flavor a try.  It will likely only be on shelves for a couple of months.

Ben & Jerry's - Pistachio Pistachio

Pistachio Pistachio - Pistachio Ice Cream with Lightly Roasted Pistachios

There's nothing fancy here.  Introduced way back in 1988, this is Ben & Jerry's Pistachio Ice Cream with the added bonus of having pistachios as the fill-in.   

The pistachio is a member of the cashew family.  It is native to the eastern Mediterranean and have been known since biblical times, indeed mentioned in the book of Genesis (43:11).  Pistachios are soft nuts and thus are not usually included in mixes of nuts, but they have proven to be quite popular in desserts.  They are a key ingredient in many baklava recipes, it is a common flavor of spumoni and it is popular ice cream flavor.  The original three flavors of Neapolitan Ice Cream were pistachio, vanilla and cherry to match the colors of the Italian Flag.

I very much enjoyed the ice cream itself.  Its been hot and muggy here in San Diego in late August and early September.  Its the one part of the year where I miss not having air conditioning.  This flavor hit the spot as it is very cool and smooth.    This flavor is a bit of an outlier in the Ben & Jerry's line.  It doesn't have anything but pistachio in it and its the only flavor with any pistachio.  If you're in the mood for the green cream, this is a good implementation of it.

Ben & Jerry's - Coffee Toffee Bar Crunch

Coffee Toffee Bar Crunch - Coffee Ice Cream with Fudge-Covered Toffee Pieces

Today we review the second Toffee Bar Crunch flavor - Coffee Toffee Bar Crunch.  Its is actually the original toffee bar flavor introduced back in 1986 -- the vanilla flavor was just introduced in 2012.  I have reviewed them out of order here.  The flavor name did not always rhyme.  It was called Coffee Heath Bar Crunch for many years, but in 2014 they removed the Heath Bar brand name as part of a push to remove GMO's (genetically-modified organisms) from Ben & Jerry's ice cream.

Opening the pint, I see the dark tan color of the coffee base.  There's a little bit of frost on the top.  It has been uncharacteristically humid here of late which may explain that.  There was also a small air pocket which is rare for Ben & Jerry's (I've seen it with other brands) but it is very small and appears to be an anomaly  Eating into the pint, the coffee base is quite noticeable but not too strong.  The toffee bar pieces are very large.  Larger than I remember them being in the vanilla version of the flavor.  I had trouble fitting some of them on the spoon to take the photos.  The toffee bars were quite good though.  Crunchy, but brittle enough not to be jawbreaking.  The coffee and the toffee go well together.  Looking online, I see that toffee-flavoring is not an uncommon coffee flavoring so I guess that makes sense.

I did enjoy this flavor.  It's a bit of a niche flavor in that there are a number of people who don't like coffee and a number of people who don't like toffee, but if you are a nut for coffee and a nut for toffee -- or you just like things that rhyme -- then this is the flavor for you.