Ben & Jerry's - Boom Chocolatta!

Boom Chocolatta! - Mocha & Caramel Ice Creams with Chocolate Cookies, Fudge Flakes & a Chocolate Cookie Core

Boom Chocolatta!  Such a fun flavor to say!  Its an obvious play on the "Boom Shakalaka!" phrase basketball announcers like to say when they are describing a particularly noteworthy slam dunk.  Where sportscasters got the phrase I am not entirely certain.  There is an old early-90s Apache Indian song with that name and there is a Shakalaka Boom number in Muppet Treasure Island from around the same time period but I have a feeling the expression is older that that.

Boom Chocolatta is the next of the 'cookie core' flavors that were introduced in January of this year.  In a core flavor there is a central non-ice cream section of goopy filling (fudge, caramel, jam, etc).  The cookie core flavors fill that central section with cookie butter which is ground up fully-baked cookies which is made into a spreadable paste (usually by adding condensed milk).  The previously reviewed Spectacular Speculoos flavor used the standard speculoo cookie butter which can be found at Trader Joes, here the Boom Chocolatta flavor uses a chocolate cookie butter.

Opening the pint we see the standard split base of the core flavor.  Mocha ice cream on one side of the pint and caramel ice cream on the other side.  The solid chocolate cookie core is also visible right away on the top of the pint.  Digging into the pint, the two base flavors were each noticeable but not in themselves very strong.  Those averse to strong coffee flavors need not worry, the mocha base is a fairly mild chocolate/coffee mix.  The chocolate cookie core dominates the pint.  Its basically the same as the common chocolate cookie swirl but unswirled and concentrated in the center.  The chocolate cookie swirl is perhaps my favorite swirl so I enjoyed this.  The common practice when eating a core flavor is to eat around the core and incorporate a little bit of it into each spoonful.  I would still recommend that here, but you don't have to worry about getting too much core into one mouthful.  There were other fill-ins.  The cookie pieces appeared to be isolated to the caramel base side while the fudge flakes were on the mocha side.  They were tasty, but they were hard to notice because they were greatly outnumbered by the core.

Boom Chocolatta! is a successful flavor and I enjoyed it.  I wanted to like it even more than I did though.  Perhaps the awesome name set high expectations?  Thinking about it, maybe I prefer my chocolate cookies swirled into the pint.  With the core flavors, you have to do your own mixing.  A minor quibble though, with a core flavor you know to expect that.  Still, if you love chocolate cookies, this flavor is a must try.