Ben & Jerry's Mint Chocolate Chunk

As I explained in a few of my previous posts, my husband and I came to Washington DC for the weekend to visit friends in the area, and I was thrilled to find that the Ben & Jerry's Scoop Shop in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, had a TON of flavors that I haven't tasted yet. Since we are visiting over a four day weekend, we decided that we would visit the scoop shop several times so that I could properly sample multiple flavors. As you can see in the photo below, my husband and friends are clearly making a huge sacrifice so that I can give the proper attention to my taste testing.

As you can see, we have spent some time making friends with the local Ben & Jerry's cow.  And we have also enjoyed ourselves tasting 10+ flavors of my favorite ice creamy goodness. While I definitely sampled many of the flavors that are unique to Ben & Jerry's such as White Russian, Two Wild & Crazy Pies and Turtle Cheesecake, I sampled a couple of their more basic flavors as well, just so that I could say that I have had those flavors at least once.

Mint Chocolate Chunk was one of those flavors that I felt like it was obligatory for me to taste, and I didn't receive any surprises. As the Ben & Jerry's version of Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream, it's a solid choice if your tastes tend toward the more traditional. The mint ice cream is tasty, although no more so than any other Mint Chocolate Chip that I've had. It is the larger chunks of chocolate that make the Ben & Jerry's more tasty than other brands with tiny chocolate chips, in my opinion. I like the more-chocolate of the Mint Chocolate options.

But after having Mint Chocolate Cookie ice cream, Ben & Jerry's other variation on the traditional Mint Chocolate Chip flavor, my final judgment is that the Mint Chocolate Cookie is the best of all these similar options. I like the mint ice cream with the Oreo cookies even better than the mint ice cream with big chocolate chunks. So while I rated Mint Chocolate Cookie 4 stars, I'm only giving Mint Chocolate Chunk 3 stars - it loses points for lack of originality. Maybe my expectations are too high, but I feel strongly that the best part of Ben & Jerry's ice cream is the originality of their flavors - something that Mint Chocolate Chunk is clearly lacking.