McConnell's - Salted Caramel Chip

Salted Caramel Chip - A uniquely deep and complex salted caramel. Almost toffee-like in flavor, brought together with our stunningly rich mix of cage-free organic eggs, pure cane sugar and fresh, Central Coast, grass-fed milk and cream, then topped-off by our signature, Guittard bittersweet, melted chocolate.

Happy New Year!  Welcome to the second year of ice cream reviews.  All of the extant Ben & Jerry's flavors have been reviewed so we are currently exploring other premium brands.  Today, it is back to McConnells for their Salted Caramel Chip.  As always, the McConnell's carton contains a colorful extended blurb on reverse side.  In the past, I've referred to this as their "Peterman Catalogue-style description" but recently I've learned the official term for this is "romance copy".

Opening the pint, I was surprised to see a solid beige color for the base.  I was expecting to see swirls of salted caramel, but here they've actually created a base ice cream salted caramel.  Some of the chips are visible on the top as well.  Digging into the pint, the caramel flavor was quite distinct.  It actually felt like tasting a "sugar daddy" candy bar.  The chips were the same as those in Mint Chip.  They are soft and half melted and had a bit of randomness to its concentration -- some spoonfuls had more chips than others.  I am not sure how one achieves this chip distribution but I actually approve.

Overall, I was not entirely satisfied with the pint.  The "sugar daddy" flavor was a hoot for a few spoonfuls but there were diminishing returns as I finished the pint.  Most importantly, it was not what I was expecting.  I expected little salted caramel mini-swirls of caramel blended with chips.  Sort of like their chocolate covered strawberries flavor but with small caramel bits instead of strawberry pieces.  So I'm kind of left craving that idea in my head.  Still, if you really like "sugar daddy" candy bars, then you could give this a try.