Tillamook - Speculoos Cookie Caramel

Speculoos Cookie Caramel - Speculoos Cookie Butter Ice Cream with Caramel Sauce and Cinnamon Spice Cookie Crumbles

We return to the Oregon-based Tillamook brand today for their Speculoos Cookie Caramel flavor.   As mentioned in a previous review, speculoos are a type of Dutch or Belgian cookies.  These crunchy cookies are so loaded with spices such as cinnamon, ginger, cloves and nutmeg that they a great basis for cookie butter.  Cookie butter is an interesting concoction made by crushing cooked cookies into a fine powder and then mixing with just enough condensed milk so as to form a spreadable paste.  This is actually a thing!  You can buy cookie butter at Trader Joe's.  Anyhow, Ben & Jerry's has a speculoos flavor in their line of cookie core flavors.  This Tillamook flavor will be interesting as they have mixed the cookie butter into the base ice cream instead of using it as a core or a mix-in.  Enough chatter, on to the ice cream!

Removing the lid provides us an odd look of the top of the pint.  You can see the base ice cream with small cookie crumble pieces in it but there are clumps of cookie-crumb-laced caramel bunched up around the rim on the very top.  Tillamook often layers their pints and and put an extra layer with mix-ins on top.  Here there wasn't enough caramel to cover the top and it looks a bit strange.  Eating the first spoonful, though it is quite delicious.  The cookie butter and cookie crumbles make for a sweet, spicy and delicious combination.  The caramel is tangy and accents the spiced cookie flavoring quite well.  So, the visual oddity is gone once I got past the top layer and had no effect on the taste whatsoever.  There was another layer of caramel about halfway down. In the past, I've had issues with Tillamook's layering (too much ice cream between layers) but it didn't bother me at all here.  The cookie butter ice cream was excellent on its own and it was excellent when mixed with caramel as well.

I really enjoyed this pint.  This was a pleasant surprise.  I actually enjoyed this better than the Ben & Jerry's cookie core flavor -- which I did like for what it was.  It was great having the cookie butter blended into a soft and creamy ice cream.  I ate the whole pint rather quickly and it left me wanting more.  Check it out for yourself and enjoy.