Berry Sweet Mascarpone (Whole Foods Exclusive)

Berry Sweet Mascarpone - Blackberry & Mascarpone Ice Creams with Shortbread Cookies & Fudge-Covered Almonds

I was not expecting this, but Ben & Jerry's has a new flavor!  I stumbled upon it while looking at the website the other day.  It is called Berry Sweet Mascarpone and it is available exclusively at Whole Foods.  So I went down to the Whole Foods on Selby & Snelling and, sure enough, there is was!  Awesome.  This is pint has blackberry and mascarpone base ice creams and mix-ins of shortbread cookies and fudge-covered almonds.  An interesting and eclectic combination of flavors.  Blackberry and fudge-covered almonds seem like strong flavors while mascarpone and shortbread cookies seem like balancing flavors.  I am quite curious to see how this plays out.

Removing the lid, I see the fudge-covered almonds right away.  I see a light purplish tinge to the base.  Looking again I can see marbling.  Some off-white purplish sections are evidently the blackberry ice cream and some whiter sections are the mascarpone ice cream.  I like how Ben & Jerry's can marble their bases like this.  Digging in, the blackberry flavor is good, but it is quite mild.  The mascarpone is smooth as expected and it does not have that distinctive cream-cheese aftertaste that some mascarpone bases have.  The shortbread cookies provide a bit of grit from time to time.  But the stars of the pint are the fudge-covered almonds.  These are excellent.  They kind of dominate the pint which is OK in that they are excellent but they easily swamp out the mild blackberry flavor.

This is a good pint with a misleading name.  I opened it up thinking I'd have a lot of blackberry flavor balanced by mascarpone and what I got was delicious fudge-covered almonds.   I could taste the other flavors from time to time, but this pint is all about those almonds.  As fans of Häagen-Dazs' classic Vanilla Swiss Almond flavor would know, chocolate-covered almonds are amazing.  These fudge-covered almonds are on par with those.  But I am scratching my head a little bit because the flavor name implies that there'd be more berry.  Anyhow, Vanilla Swiss Almond fans who want a twist on their favorite flavor might want to trek to Whole Foods to check this one out.