Jeni's - High Five Candy Bar

High Five Candy Bar - Peanut Butter, Caramel, Chocolate, and Pretzels

 

I got a surprise while reading news on twitter the other day.  Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream has a new flavor which is only available at Whole Foods.  I was not expecting this because there is nothing on their website about it.  I often have Jeni's shipped to me online, but this flavor is not even available online.  Well, we do have Whole Foods here in town, so I checked and found it.  I bought it at the one on Lake & Excelsior in Minneapolis, but I have also seen it at the one on Snelling and Selby in Saint Paul.  The new flavor is called High Five Candy Bar.  It looks like it might also be included in a collection later this summer, we shall see.  The side of the carton says that it is based on Jeni's all-time favorite candy bar.  She does not spell out which one, but my guess is that it is the Take 5 because it has the same ingredients -- peanut butter (and peanuts), caramel, chocolate and pretzels.  Take Five makes me think of the odd-metered Dave Brubeck jazz standard, so I will listen to that while I finish this review.

Removing the lid and peeling back the feel-good message on the protective foil, the top of the ice cream is quite beautiful.  The peanut butter base is light in color, there are a couple of swirls of caramel visible and then two different sizes of chocolate pieces.  I am guessing that the larger pieces have pretzel pieces inside.  Digging my spoon in, the peanut butter base is delicious and not too heavy.  The caramel swirls are quite delicious.  The pretzel pieces have variable crunchiness.  Some pieces are crunchier and some are almost chewy.  They deliver a bit of salt into the mix.  The chocolate pieces (and the chocolate pretzel coating) does not dominate like some chocolate mix-ins.  It blends into the mix.  All the flavors in the pint seem to blend more than I was expecting.  It's like a peanut butter caramel blend with a bit of salt and chocolate.  It is a good blend.

This is a very well-done implementation of a candy-bar-themed ice cream from Jeni's.  It includes all the ingredients of a candy bar, yet it is not just sticking a candy bar into a Blizzard machine and mixing it up.  This feels like the typical nuanced blend of flavors that you expect from Jeni's -- just candy bar ingredients.  Looking for other candy-bar themed flavors in the archive, I found the since retired Candy Bar Pie and Nutty Caramel Swirl flavors from Ben & Jerry's.  Those were chunkier with chocolate mix-ins that stood out more.  There was also the Snicker Doodle flavor from Sweet Science which used snickers-bar-themed mix-ins in a snicker-doodle-flavored base.  That has an amazing caramel swirl.  Today's Jeni's flavor holds up against these.  If you like peanut butter candy bars and there is a Whole Foods near you, then check it out.