Ben & Jerry's Strawberry Cheesecake

Before I get into my review of Ben & Jerry's Strawberry Cheesecake ice cream, I must first make it clear that my expectations for this flavor were extremely high. Aside from ice cream and my husband, the other passionate love of my life is cheesecake. I am, in fact, quite convinced that it is the perfect food, as it combines sugar and cheese. (Whoever came up with cheesecake was more genius than Einstein and should have won a Nobel.) And while I enjoy a wide range of cheesecakes with different flavors and densities, I must admit that over the past few years, I have allowed myself to become spoiled by the extraordinarily decadent confectionery creations at The Cheesecake Factory. D*mn them and their Oreo Dream Extreme Cheesecake and their Reese's Peanut Butter Chocolate Cheesecake and their Chocolate Raspberry Truffle Cheesecake! At 1,100 calories or more per piece, these are desserts that could actually kill you - and yet thousands of Cheesecake Factory patrons (including myself) are willing to sacrifice our very well-being in order to enjoy their deviously engineered caloric bombs. Yes, my love of cheesecake is that strong.

As a result of my steady Cheesecake Factory patronage, I was expecting a very rich cheesecake flavor when I cracked open a pint of Ben & Jerry's Strawberry Cheesecake, and I admit that I found myself a little disappointed. The cheesecake flavor of Strawberry Cheesecake has a lighter taste, more like Jell-O Cheesecake Cups and recipes for low-cal cheesecakes instead of a slice from The Cheesecake Factory or a dense piece of New York style cheesecake.  The flavor even struck me as less rich than Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia, which is one of the brands two all-time top sellers (only recently trumped by Half Baked after reigning supreme for decades) perhaps because it manages to be both fruity and retain the creamy richness of Ben & Jerry's many decadent chocolate ice creams. I still enjoyed my first serving of Strawberry Cheesecake, but my expectation that I would be digging into a flavor as rich as a slice of Cheesecake Factory's Oreo Dream Extreme put a bit of a damper on the experience.

I wanted to be fair to Cheesecake Strawberry, though, and I more generally wanted very much to love a Ben & Jerry's cheesecake-flavored ice cream. After all, this flavor should be the perfect harmony of my two great confectionery loves, Ben & Jerry's ice cream and cheesecake.  So I sat down again another day to tackle the second half of the pint, keeping in mind that Strawberry Cheesecake was meant to be a lighter tasting cheesecake treat, and that I needed to judge the flavor based on its own merits and in comparison to similarly light tasting flavors. I realized that Strawberry Cheesecake doesn't belong in a category with extremely decadent flavors like Phish Food, Chocolate Fudge Brownie and S'mores, but instead should be compared with many of Ben & Jerry's Greek Froyo flavors like Banana Peanut Butter and Liz Lemon. These flavors, especially Banana Peanut Butter, manage to taste both rich and light.  Strawberry Cheesecake almost measures up to Banana Peanut Butter in that regard,  with a pleasing and delicious sweet cheese flavor with a hint of strawberry that I am sure to crave when I am in the right mood (read - not craving chocolate).

The light cheesecake flavored ice cream isn't the only advantage to this flavor, though. While I didn't enjoy the graham cracker swirl in the B&J's flavor S'mores, it suddenly became a miraculous element in Strawberry Cheesecake. This is graham cracker swirl done right.

Instead of a gritty graham cracker texture spread evenly throughout practically every millimeter of ice cream, as I experienced it in my pint of S'mores, there are thicker veins of graham cracker running through the cheesecake ice cream in this flavor, leaving distinct graham cracker and non-graham cracker zones in the pint. The ice cream was therefore still smooth instead of gritty, and the flavor more accurately mimicked the experience of eating a piece of cheesecake overall. The small pieces of frozen strawberries are underwhelming, but I am willing to forgive that in light of the perfect balance between the cheesecake ice cream and the veins of graham cracker.

All in all, this is a tasty flavor that I will be buying again, at least occasionally. I have to admit, though, that my preference is still for the more decadent flavors of Ben & Jerry's the majority of the time, which is why this flavor only gets 4 stars instead of 5.  But I cam easily understand why Strawberry Cheesecake is the favorite flavor for several of my friends. They actually prefer the lighter flavor - which just goes to show you that the difference between a 4 star raring and a 5 star rating is often a matter of general preference, as opposed to quality. Strawberry Cheesecake is definitely a high quality flavor and deserves to be on everyone's Ben & Jerry's bucket list.

Want another opinion of Ben & Jerry's Strawberry Cheesecake?  Check out the review of this flavor posted on The Ice Cream Informant.