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.