Ben & Jerry's - Empower Mint

Empower Mint - Peppermint Ice Cream with Fudge Brownies and Fudge Swirls

It is an election year and Ben & Jerry's has a special flavor to celebrate - Empower Mint.  Ben & Jerry are well-known Bernie Sanders supporters (they are also left-leaning and from Vermont) and for a special event they created hand-packed pints of a flavor called Bernie's Yearning which was a "mint chocolate chip flavor where all the chips have somehow floated to the top" - I guess there was solid chocolate disk on top of a pint of peppermint ice cream.  Amusing as that was, the flavor never made it into mass production.  But they have stuck with the mint chocolate theme for a more general election year flavor.  Here it is a mint and brownies combination.  Such a natural combination, I'm not sure why no one has thought of it before.  I can't wait to dig in.

But before we do, a quick tangent.  This happens to be my 100th ice cream review!  100 pints! To celebrate that occasion, I made a cool collage:

100 reviews! (click to enlarge)

That's a lot of ice cream.  Or is it?  100 pints is 12.5 gallons.  It has been entertaining hunting down one hundred different pints of ice cream.  That has been the most fun.  Trying different flavors.  Anyhow, a special Ben & Jerry flavor seems like a fitting choice for this milestone review.

On to the ice cream!  Opening the pint, you see the white color of the peppermint base (no green food coloring here) and right away there are lots of brownies visible.  Digging in, the peppermint base is bright and flavorful as it in my old favorite Mint Chocolate Cookie flavor but instead of a sandwich cookie mix-in it is soft, chocolatey brownies -- and there are more brownies mixed in than I expected.  These are the same Greyston brownies that they've been using in their Chocolate Fudge Brownie flavor for over twenty five years and these brownies are famous for a reason - they are quite chocolatey and remain soft and chewy despite being immersed in a pint of frozen ice cream.  The soft brownies go really well with the smooth mint base.  Empower Mint also features some fudge swirls which did add to the general chocolatey-ness but the brownies are the star of the show here.

Perhaps I am a bit biased as mint and chocolate is my favorite combination, but this was an amazing pint of ice cream.  I hadn't thought of a mint and brownie combination before, but it seems so obvious in retrospect.  I'm actually a little sad that this is only an election-year flavor.  Maybe they'll bring it back every four years, or every two years to get people interested in off-year elections.  Come to think of it, there's usually a vote for something going on -- mayor, school board, etc -- any excuse to put this flavor into stores would be welcome.