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.

Ben & Jerry's - Confetti Cake

Confetti Cake - Vanilla Cake Batter Ice Cream with Sprinkles, Cake Pieces & Vanilla Frosting Swirls

A new Ben & Jerry's flavor!  They've cycled their exclusive flavor with Walmart retiring the Pecan Sticky Buns flavor in exchange for a new cake-based flavor called Confetti Cake.  Long time readers will know that Ben & Jerry's is the brand that started it all for me.  It's been a while since there has been a new flavor and it is nice to come 'home'.

Opening the pint shows the light color of the vanilla base with a few small cake pieces visible right away and some purple sprinkles also in view.  Digging in, its a relatively sweet pint as the frosting swirls are blended into the base ice cream.  They were blended together pretty well, it was hard to tell them apart most of the time.  The cake pieces were of decent size and were generously dispersed throughout the pint.  They were soft and cakey despite being frozen and immersed in ice cream.  The sprinkles added some additional doses of concentrated sweetness but otherwise their impact was mainly visual.  

All in all, it was another successful cake flavor.  If you have a sweet tooth and like a cake-based flavor then this is a good pint for you.  It was similar to the Cake My Day limited batch flavor from last year.  Cake My Day had a raspberry swirl instead of sprinkles.  I guess which one you would like better depends on how much you like raspberry -- some people have strong opinions on raspberry.  If you liked the raspberry there, you might miss not having it here, but if raspberry is not your thing you may look forward to a cake-based flavor without it.  It is interesting that these cake-based flavors are common in these limited batch flavors.  I wonder if they're experimenting with the right mix before they promote one to full time. 

  

Ben & Jerry's - Pecan Sticky Buns

Pecan Sticky Buns - Buttery Brown Sugar Ice Cream with Pecans, Sticky Bun Dough & a Cream Cheese Frosting Swirl

Walmart has cycled their Ben & Jerry's exclusive flavor again!   Feels like it was only a few months ago that I reviewed their previous exclusive flavor.  Indeed it was only a few months ago!  This one sounds pretty interesting.  At first glance, it appears to be a twist on their Cinnamon Buns flavor except that this pint has pecans and frosting instead of cinnamon and streusel.  I can't wait to try it out.

Removing the lid, I see a the fluffy off-white top of the buttery brown sugar base with a couple of the mix-ins visible on top.  The flavor of the base itself is rather mild -- typical of Ben & Jerry's bases where the main purpose is to serve as a vehicle of the mix-ins.  I could definitely tell it was not vanilla.  Digging in the pecans and bun dough pieces were dispersed throughout the pint.  Those two mix-ins were about the same size so often I did not know until I bit down where I was in for a crunchy pecan or a sugary-chewy bun dough piece.  Both were quite tasty though.  The bun dough pieces outnumbered the pecans about two to one.  I did not notice the cream cheese frosting swirl at all.  It is possible that it got blended into the base pretty well.  It is also possible I mistook some of it as part of the sweetness that the bun dough pieces provided.  Either way, the pint is plenty sweet enough.

I did enjoy this pint.  The Walmart exclusive flavors are often fun twists on existing flavors and this is no exception.  If you enjoy the Cinnamon Buns flavor for the doughy mix-ins and want to see what it would be like with pecans, then see if you can find a Walmart that carries it.  Act fast though, before Walmart cycles the flavor back out again.

Ben & Jerrys - Peanut Butter & Cookies (Walmart Exclusive)

Peanut Butter & Cookies - Sweet Cream Ice Cream with Chocolate Sandwich Cookies & a Crunchy Peanut Butter Swirl

After finishing all of the extant Ben & Jerry flavor reviews last fall, it is so exciting to get two new flavors in one week!  Today's review is for a new Walmart-exclusive flavor.   Walmart has retired the Strawberry Not So Shortcake flavor and replace it with Peanut Butter & Cookies.  The only reason I go to Walmart is for the exclusive Ben & Jerry's flavors and since Walmart cycles their exclusive flavors more than other vendors, I end up making the trek across town a few times a year.  Peanut Butter & Cookies appears to be the classic "cookies and cream" with a peanut butter twist. Interestingly, Ben & Jerry's does not have a straight "cookies and cream" flavor.  They have two which are relatively close - Milk & Cookies alters the formula by using chocolate chip cookies instead of sandwich cookies (generic Oreos) while Mint Chocolate Cookie uses sandwich cookies but with a mint base instead of vanilla or sweet cream.

Removing the lid reveals a pint which looks like "cookies and cream" as one would expect.  Already on top you can see some orange coloration from the additional peanut butter swirl.    As I ate my way into the pint, it tasted much closer to a straight cookies and cream implementation than either of the variants above.  If Ben & Jerry's wanted to do a simple implementation of cookies and cream, it would be quite successful.  Of course, this particular pint is not without its own twist.  The peanut butter swirl is not ubiquitous -- not every spoonful has some of it -- but its flavor is sticks out when it is encountered.  So even though there is not a lot of orange in the pictures, it does appear to be the right balance between the peanut butter and the cookies.  The fact that sweet cream is used instead of vanilla as a base is a bit curious.  For some reason, Ben & Jerry's usually avoids mixing peanut butter and vanilla.  I didn't miss the vanilla, though.  As the name of the flavor suggests, its all about the peanut butter and the cookies.

Adding peanut butter to cookies and cream is a very interesting idea.  I don't know if I would have thought to do that, but it turned out pretty well.  I just checked and found that there are actually two peanut butter variants of Oreos themselves (peanut butter filling and peanut butter creme filling).  I knew there were a lot of Oreo variants, but I hadn't thought of that combination either.  Anyhow, if you like cookies and cream and peanut butter then check this out before Walmart cycles its exclusive flavor again.

Ben & Jerry's - Strawberry Not So Shortcake

Strawberry Not So Shortcake - Strawberry Cake Ice Cream with Strawberries & Shortbread Pieces

Strawberry Not So Shortcake is already the third exclusive flavor that Walmart has had since I've been writing these reviews.  The fact that Walmart cycles their exclusive flavors much more quickly than other stores is the only reason I ever go to Walmart.  Every time I hear that there is a new flavor, I trek to the other side of town once or twice a week to the Walmart Supercenter to see if they've got it in stock.  Last week I hit paydirt and brought home this pint which means I won't have to go to Walmart for a few months.

Opening the pint, I see the bright pink flavor of the strawberry cake ice cream base with some darker pink strawberry specks also visible.  Digging into the pint, the base ice cream indeed has a strong strawberry flavor which is quite tasty.  Curiously, it is strawberry cake ice cream and not just strawberry ice cream.  As has been mentioned in previous reviews, strawberry is a very strong and sweet flavor which can be overpowering so it is often cut with something else such as sour cream, cream cheese or in this case cake batter.  I tried to figure out what was cakey about the base.  I guess I did get the sensation of eating angel food cake from time to time but other than that it was just a muted but still very yummy strawberry flavor.  The strawberry pieces were not as prevalent as I expected them to be, but one thing I did notice was that they weren't frozen.  I have complained with previous pints about the unpleasant sensation of biting into frozen strawberries but that was not a problem here.  The shortbread pieces were fairly well-dispersed in the pint but they themselves did not have much of a flavor at all.  Nothing bad about them but for me, they just provided an occasional change of texture as I ate the pint.

All in all, I enjoyed this pint quite a bit.  So many of Ben & Jerry's flavors feature chocolate or peanut butter (or both) and sometimes I'm in the mood for something fruity and a flavor such as this one can really hit the spot.  The only qualm I have is that this flavor is extremely close the previously reviewed Strawberry Cheesecake flavor.  There, the base is strawberry cheesecake instead of strawberry cake and the swirl is a contrasting graham cracker one instead of blending shortbread one.  I really enjoyed the Strawberry Cheesecake pint as well.  If you love strawberries you'll probably want to try this flavor before Walmart cycles to another flavor.  On the other hand, if you don't have a Walmart Supercenter nearby or if you can't stand going to Walmart then the Strawberry Cheesecake flavor is a delicious substitute.

Ben & Jerry's - Roasted & Toasted (Walmart Exclusive)

Roasted & Toasted - Dark Chocolate Ice Cream with Fudge Chunks, Fudge-Covered Roasted Almonds & a Toasted Marshmallow Swirl

I stopped by Walmart to check out their ice cream display -- I only go to Walmart for ice cream -- and I was surprised to see a brand-new Ben & Jerry's Flavor called Roasted & Toasted.  I had not heard anything about a new flavor and there it was.  Unfortunately, this particular Walmart's freezer case had severe frost issues.  So thick was the frost on the outside of these pints that I was concerned for the integrity of the ice cream inside.  After researching online, I found another Walmart location and their freezer case had frost issues too, but thankfully their pints of Roasted & Toasted were freshly stocked and appeared to be unscathed.

This is the first Ben & Jerry's pint I've seen with a dark chocolate base.  McConnell's Chocolate Almond Brittle had a dark chocolate base, but not any Ben & Jerry's pint that I've had.  Opening the pint the first think I noticed was that the dark chocolate was indeed very dark.  Also noticeable were dark golden color of the toasted marshmallow swirls and a couple of the fudge chunks.  Digging into the pint dark chocolate base was very tasty.  The marshmallow swirls did not end up making the pint gooey as it did in the Phish Food flavor, but it did soften the pint up a bit as the dark chocolate base would otherwise be very thick.  The fudge chunks and fudge-covered almonds were generously dispersed throughout the pint.  The roastedness of the almond flavor really stuck out as I was crunching into these fill-ins.

I enjoyed this pint.  Its interesting to compare this to the McConnell's Chocolate Almond Brittle flavor as they are both dark chocolate bases with almond fill-ins.  The McConnell's base was thicker and had more of a fudgesicle consistency and its melt-in-your-mouth brittle softened it up a little bit but not as much as the marshmallow swirls did here.  In the brittle, the almond pieces were small and unroasted whereas here they were larger, fudge-covered and had a strong roasted flavor.

Walmart switches their exclusive flavors fairly frequently so if this flavor interests you and you can find a store with a decent freezer case, then check it out before they swap in a new flavor.

Ben & Jerry's - Peanut Butter Brownie Sundae

Peanut Butter Brownie Sundae - Walmart Exclusive flavor -- Vanilla Ice Cream with Fudge Brownies & a Crunchy Peanut Buttery Swirl

I was on a quest to find another flavor (Candy Bar Pie) and I found myself trekking to the Walmart on the other side of town to find it.  They didn't have that flavor but I figured as long as I was there, I'd grab the WalMart exclusive flavor.  Peanut Butter Brownie Sundae.

Opening the pint you see lots of texture within the vanilla base.   Indeed the first spoonful has lots of peanut butter flavor.  The peanut butter swirl dominates the base so much that you forget that it is not a peanut butter ice cream.  The fact that its a crunchy swirl gives the ice cream a much dryer texture than usual.  Sometimes a larger chunk of the swirl would appear on my spoon and it was very peanuty -- not at all creamy.  All chunks and no butter.    So, while a flavor like Phish Food is so gooey that it seems to melt faster, this flavor seemed to melt slower.  The pint maintained its solid consistency even as I got to the bottom of the carton.  There were quite a bit of fudge brownie chunks in the mix.  The chunks were flavorful and were soft and chewy (i.e. not frozen).

All and all, a successful flavor.  There are so many different flavors that are permutations of the chocolate & peanut butter combination that I'd leave it up to the reader to decide if this mix of dry, crunchy peanutty bits mixed with soft fudge brownies is right for them.