Ben & Jerry's Cinnamon Buns

Oh. My. Lord.

I didn't think that I would ever find an ice cream flavor that I love quite as passionately as Ben & Jerry's Peanut Butter Jam Session, but it has indeed happened.  Cinnamon Buns is now tied with PBJS for my most favoritest ice cream flavor of all time.  Amazingly enough, neither one of these flavors has even the teensiest bit of chocolate in it.  I can't even begin to tell you how shocking that is to me.  But with its caramel ice cream, chunks of cinnamon bun dough and cinnamon streusel swirls, Cinnamon Buns doesn't need any chocolate.  (Did I really just say that?!)  

A friend of mine had recently recommended Cinnamon Buns as a must-try Ben & Jerry's flavor, saying that for several months, she and her husband had been buying a pint every week. Until they realized that their pants just kept getting tighter and tighter. While that sounded like the ideal recommendation to me, I still didn't expect that I would fall so completely in love with Cinnamon Buns. But each bite of this flavor is a delicious burst of sweet cinnamon, blended with a light caramel, that sends me to gastronomic heaven.

There's nothing very unexpected about the flavor, which tastes exactly like someone went to Cinnabon, stole a carton of their dough, and mixed it up with some rich vanilla-caramel Ben & Jerry's ice cream. But while the descriptions of some Ben & Jerry's flavors sound completely amazing and then end up disappointing me (for example, Coconut Seven Layer Bar and Volun-Tiramisu), Cinnamon Buns is a flawlessly and deliciously executed flavor that exceeds my expectations.  Just look at these chunks of cinnamon bun dough, which are plentiful throughout the ice cream -

These little balls of cinnamon dough are exquisite, and the pictures should make it clear that with Cinnamon Buns, Ben & Jerry's has come up with a heavenly recipe.  Cinnamon streusel + cinnamon dough + ice cream blended to perfection. In fact, I think that if I gave myself free rein, I could eat Ben & Jerry's Cinnamon Buns in greater quantities than I could eat actual Cinnabons or homemade cinnamon rolls, which are amazingly delicious but sometimes overwhelm my taste buds with all the gooey frosting. With their Cinnamon Buns flavor, Ben and Jerry have come up with a perfectly rich, perfectly balanced (at least for my palette) treat.

Do I even need to say it? This flavor gets 5 stars and a permanent spot in my freezer.