Ben & Jerry's Mint Chocolate Cookie

After falling in love with their Milk & Cookies flavor, with its genius blend of Oreo cookie swirl and chocolate chip cookie swirl, I decided that I needed to prioritize taste testing any other variations on the traditional Cookies & Cream flavor invented by the Ben & Jerry's Flavor Gurus. So over the weekend, I picked up a pint of Mint Chocolate Cookie.  And I realized that Ben & Jerry's may have a few basic flavors like Vanilla, Chocolate and Strawberry, but clearly they aren't content to simply produce your basic Cookies & Cream with chunks of Oreo in vanilla ice cream.  Instead, they've come up with Mint Chocolate Cookie - ground up Oreo cookies in peppermint ice cream.

I honestly wasn't sure whether or not I would enjoy this flavor because on the one hand, I have never liked plain Peppermint or Peppermint Stick ice creams. All by its lonesome, the peppermint flavor is too strong for my tastes. On the other hand, I absolutely adore the combination of Mint and Chocolate. Thin Mints, Mint Chocolate M & Ms, Andes Mints, even Mint Chocolate Clif Protein Bars. The Bath & Body Works Mint Chocolate candle from their 2013 Holiday Traditions product line is the most amazing thing I have ever smelled. (Sometimes I even fall asleep cuddling my Mint Chocolate candle, no joke.)  I am not so much fond of York Peppermint Patties, Ghirardelli Peppermint Squares or Mint Chocolate Fudge, though. The balence between the Mint and the Chocolate has to be right. The Chocolate needs to temper the Peppermint. The Mint cannot overwhelm the Chocolate or be too pasty tasting, like the mint in York Patties. Junior Mints are downright disgusting because of the similarly overwhelming pasty peppermint filling, but despite the dominance of mint flavor, traditional Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream works for me somehow.  I think my enjoyment of that flavor has at least something to do with the difference between peppermint and mint.  But you get the picture - Ben & Jerry's Mint Chocolate Cookie flavor has a lot of promise, but will only be successful by my judgment if the Ben & Jerry's Flavor Gurus have achieved the proper balance between the Mint and the Chocolate flavors.

After the first bite, I felt like jumping up, clacking a pair of castinets and shouting,"By George, I think she's got it!"  I felt nearly as ecstatic as Rex Harrison when Audrey Hepburn manages to correctly pronounce the phrase, "The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain." (Insert joyous musical theater dance number here.)

Mint Chocolate Cookie is like the perfectly blended love child of those two all-time favorite traditional ice cream flavors, Mint Chocolate Chip amd Cookies & Cream. I really can't think of a better way to describe this flavor or much more to add, since Mint Chocolate Cookie isn't an overly complex concoction like some of Ben & Jerry's other ice creams. The reason that I find this flavor to be a satisfying treat is that the Flavor Gurus got the blend of Chocolate and Mint just right.  I don't love this flavor quite as much as I love Milk & Cookies because the ground up Oreos in Mint Chocolate Cookie aren't as rich as the blend of Oreos and chocolate chip cookies in M&C, but this flavor still gets a solid 4 stars.  I would definitely choose a pint of Mint Chocolate Cookie over plain old Mint Chocolate Chip any day.