Ben & Jerry's - Ice Cream Sammie

Ice Cream Sammie - Vanilla Ice Cream with Chocolate Sandwich Cookies & Chocolate Cookie Swirls

It is always good to keep an eye on the Ben & Jerry flavor page.  Even when they do not have a major new flavor release, they periodically cycle their vendor-specific exclusive flavors.  There are two new exclusive flavors for Walmart -- Ice Cream Sammie and Red, White and Blueberry.   So, I trekked down to Walmart and picked them up.  Today's flavor is Ice Cream Sammie -- a vanilla ice cream base with chocolate sandwich cookies and chocolate cookie swirls.  It sounds a lot like an implementation of 'cookies and cream'.  The cookies and cream flavor in their regular menu is Milk & Cookies which is more of a twist on the standard cookies & cream -- it includes chocolate chip cookies instead of Oreo-like sandwich cookies.  Maybe today's pint is more of a standard implementation?  Let's check it out.

Opening the pint, I see the light color of the vanilla base along with large Oreo-like cookie pieces.  So, by "sammie" they mean crunchy sandwich cookies and not the soft rectangular wafers of an ice cream sandwich.  The sandwich cookies used here are imitation Oreos -- Ben & Jerry's switched away from the name-brand version in the mid-00's so they could have more control over their ingredient sourcing.  Not only are their large pieces but there is also a lot of 'speckling' of cookie crumbs throughout the base.  This is probably the effect of the chocolate cookie swirl that was added into the mix, but it also is another way of simulating the usage of Oreos instead of imitation Oreos.  Real Oreos create much finer crumbs when crushed than any imitation Oreos that I have ever seen.    Digging in, the cookies are very tasty and I can even still taste the vanilla in the vanilla base.  In some of the larger cookie pieces, I can see the creme filling between the sandwich cookies.  It reminds me a lot of the Mint Chocolate Cookie flavor, but without the mint. 

This pint turned out to be a well-done implementation of the straight 'cookies and cream' flavor.     The standard flavors in their lineup all put a twist on the cookies-and-cream formula -- either by adding mint or by using chocolate chip cookies instead of Oreo-like cookies.  Here, we have a simple cookies and cream.  It's pretty good, though.