Ben & Jerry's - Salted Carmel Core

Salted Carmel Core - Sweet Cream Ice Cream with Blonde Brownies & a Salted Caramel Core

Salted Caramel Core is the last of the core flavors to be reviewed.  Its hard to believe that the standard core flavors were introduced just last year since its been several months now that the newer cookie core flavors have been out, but indeed this flavor was introduced in 2014.  As you may recall, a core flavor is one where the central cylindrical core of the pint is a solid block of a goopy fill-in such as jam, fudge, cookie butter, or in this case caramel.  With the use of a salted caramel, Ben & Jerry's is both jumping on the big salted caramel craze and is making me ask myself the age-old question "Do I want my ice cream to make me thirsty?"

Opening the lid, I see the bright color of the sweet cream base and a sizeable dollop of the salted caramel core visible.  You can also see little specks of the blonde brownies fill-ins.   Eating my way down into the pint, the salted caramel core revealed itself more and comprised a substantial middle section of the pint.  Was it a bit redder in color than the Karamel Sutra unsalted core, or was that an optical illusion created by the lighter colored base here?  I am not sure.  The blondie fill-ins stayed speck-sized throughout the pint but were fairly numerous.  This may be for the best as I mention in my review of the Blondie Ambition flavor that the blondies did not stay soft in the ice cream the way the brownie fill-ins had.  Large pieces of frozen blondie were not pleasant to eat but smaller specks made the harder texture less worrisome.  They were almost like blondie chips.  Unlike many of the core flavors which use two base flavors splitting the pint in half, only a single sweet cream base was used here.  I think this may be the only Ben & Jerry's flavor to use a sweet cream base.  I think they were looking for a simple contrast to the strong salted caramel flavor.  Simple here meaning the lack of vanilla.  In other flavors, a caramel base is used when they look to avoid vanilla but here they may have thought that more caramel would have been too much.

Did this pint make me thirsty?  Not as much as I expected, though I believe my expectations were high.  I had had this flavor once before about a year ago and I become quite parched while eating it.  This time, I may have been more prepared by making sure I was well hydrated beforehand and by using the technique of eating around the core and putting only a bit of the caramel into each spoonful.  I did enjoy this pint but perhaps not as much as a salted-caramel junkie would have.  Of course if you are into salted caramel, you'd want to check this out and see how Ben & Jerry did.