Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Peppermint Crunch

Chocolate Peppermint Crunch is Ben & Jerry's latest foray into the territory of chocolate and mint flavor combinations - an ongoing experiment with this traditionally popular combo that has included the now-retired flavors Chocolate Mint & Cookies, Chocolate Mystic Mint, Mint Chocolate Chunk, Mint Chocolate Fudge Swirl, Mint Fudge and Mint with Oreo Cookie, as well as the currently available flavor Mint Chocolate Cookie. Looking over this list, you might begin to wonder why Ben & Jerry's has gone through so many variations on the same chocolate and mint theme, but I would venture to guess that it's not because any of these flavors failed to sell. Ben and Jerry simply seem to enjoy working and reworking a combination, like cooks who change the spices in the stew just a little bit each time. And while most Mint Chocolate Chip ice creams produced by most ice cream manufacturers are pretty much interchangeable with all other Mint Chocolate Chip ice creams, the two Ben & Jerry's chocolate and mint flavors that I have now sampled are both a great deal different from your average carton of Mint Chocolate Chip.

I first sampled Mint Chocolate Cookie, which with its small chunks and crushed bits of Oreo is a few steps up from plain Jane Mint Chocolate Chip. Seeing a second chocolate and mint combo on the market at the same time made me curious to find out what the difference was between Mint Chocolate Cookie and Chocolate Peppermint Crunch, simce both combine chocolate, peppermint, fudge and cookie elements. Time for an exercise in Compare and Contrast.

As I sampled Chocolate Peppermint Crunch, two notable differences presented themselves. First of all, while Mint Chocolate Cookie has a mint ice cream base just like the traditional Mint Chocolate Chip flavor, Chocolate Peppermint Crunch has a chocolate ice cream base with peppermint and fudge swirls running throughout. While the fudge swirl do not stand out in any discernible way from the chocolate ice cream itself, the peppermint swirl have the effect of basically turning the base flavor into a delicious hybrid of chocolate peppermint ice cream. I'm definitely a fan.

The second difference that I noticed with this flavor is the presence of the mint chocolate cookie balls. I was expecting that the cookie balls would probably resemble the softer cookie dough in Half Baked, the cookie swirls in Milk & Cookies, or the Oreo cookie in Mint Chocolate Cookie. But this is where Ben & Jerry's has made a big change that makes this flavor a lot more of a fun experience to sample. Like Chubby Hubby, eating Chocolate Peppermint Crunch makes me feel as though I am going on a treasure hunt. Because the cookie balls are actually about as big as malted milk balls and as crunchy as the pretzel pieces in Chubby Hubby, you end up really having to dig your way through the pint of Chocolate Peppermint Crunch.  It takes something of an effort to scoop out those cookie balls, but for those of us who enjoy that kind of thing, Chocolate Peppermint Crunch is a whole lot of fun to eat.  You actually end up chomping on this frozen dairy delight.

As for the balance between chocolate and mint, Ben & Jerry's has done an excellent job yet again of finding the perfect blend between the two flavors. As I explained in my original review of mint chocolate cookie, I am very picky about the peppermint to chocolate ratio in my chocolate and mint desserts. I adore Thin Mints and Andes Mints, but there is too much nasty peppermint paste in York Peppermint Patties amd Ghirardelli Chocolate Peppermint Squares for my taste. So I am very pleased that Ben & Jerry's seems to understand the proper ratio between the two flavors that will please my taste buds.  Of the two B&J's mint and chocolate flavors that are currently on the market, I like this one even better than Mint Chocolate Cookie because it's more chocolatey. The best description that I can come up with to describe this delicious flavor is that it is like Christmas in my mouth, and that is high praise indeed, coming from someone who loves Christmas as much as I do.

Because of the excellent job combining chocolate and mint, and even more because those crunchy cookie balls make this flavor so much fun to eat, I give Chocolate Peppermint Crunch 4.5 stars.  This is another chunky paragon of the Ben & Jerry's brand that joyfully reinvents I tradition and makes my mission to sample all of their flavors so much fun.

Ben & Jerry's Vanilla Caramel Fudge

I have to admit that when I first saw the pint of Ben & Jerry's Vanilla Caramel Fudge, I wasn't very excited. Sure I love caramel, and sure I love fudge, but a lot of Ben & Jerry's flavors have caramel and fudge - and then some. And vanilla ice cream? Yawn. Nine times out of ten, give me chocolate ice cream, peanut butter ice cream, sweet cream ice cream... any ice cream but vanilla ice cream. Vanilla Caramel Fudge seemed too simple, like a cop out from the Ben & Jerry's Flavor Gurus. "They're just phoning it in," I thought.

But then I had a flash of memory.  Images recollected from high school of happy visits to the local Baskin Robbins with groups of my friends.  We would walk down the block from the school after play rehearsal or over to the shop on boring Sunday afternoons.  I remember staring down into the bucket of the flavor called "Gold Medal Ribbon" with anticipation as the employee scooped my order, a flavor aptly named because it had decent-sized ribbons of chocolate and caramel running through the vanilla ice cream.  Gold Medal Ribbon was my favorite flavor of ice cream for several years when I was growing up in Michigan, a time when I didn't have a job and it seemed like I was always pulling the very last few dollars from my wallet and scrounging for some coins at the bottom of my purse to pay for my scoop. Good times. (Someone over at Baskin Robbins R&D obviously did a bang up job developing and naming that flavor, since it has stuck with me for nearly fifteen years.)

Now, as a thirty-one year-old (or am I thirty-two now??) with credit cards and a paycheck to support my ice cream consumption, I found myself standing in a grocery store in New York and holding a pint of Ben & Jerry's Vanilla Caramel Fudge that sounds like the exact same flavor that I loved as a teenager. With my husband trying to move me along out of the dangerous freezer section, I gave in to nostalgia, throwing the Vanilla Caramel Fudge into my shopping cart instead of the more exciting-sounding New York Super Fudge Chunk. I wanted to see how the Ben & Jerry's flavor compared to my rose-colored memory of Gold Medal Ribbon.

And oh sweet Moses, I will never be preemptively dismissive of a simple flavor combination again, because Vanilla Caramel Fudge is a mouth orgasm that I never want to forget.  The vanilla ice cream turns out to actually be the ideal base for the generous veins of ooey gooey caramel and fudge that wind their way through the pint.  And by generous, I mean ubiquitous.  Sometimes the photos of their flavors that Ben & Jerry's posts on their website are much more chunky or filled with thicker ribbons or swirls than you actually get when you by a pint off the shelf of the average grocery store down the street.  But this photo (left) is not an exaggeration in the slightest.  As you can see from this photo that I snapped, there really are that many thick, delicious veins of caramel and fudge running through the pint -

Best of all, the caramel manages to remain soft in the freezer, as do the ribbons of fudge, which resemble chocolate sauce. In short, eating from a pint of Vanilla Caramel Fudge is like going to a scoop shop and having a sundae doused liberally with caramel and fudge sauce, only better because the veins running through the whole pint ensure that you don't eat up all the chocolate sauce and find yourself with a lump of plain vanilla ice cream still melting in your bowl. Having the fudge and caramel mixed directly in and throughout the ice cream ensures the perfect rich balance of all the flavors.  The combination reminds me of Ben & Jerry's Phish Food flavor, but I actually even prefer Vanilla Caramel Fudge because the vanilla ice cream keeps the flavor from becoming too rich and lets the caramel take the stage more equally with the chocolate fudge flavor.

Because of this perfect harmony between the two, as well as my general love of chocolate and caramel combinations, I give this flavor 5 stars and a permanent spot in my freezer.

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.

Ben & Jerry's Banana Peanut Butter Greek Froyo

To explain my deep and passionate love for the Ben & Jerry's flavor Peanut Butter Jam Session, I wrote what amounts to a love letter to that childhood classic, the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. At some point in elementary school, I discovered that PB&J had a delicious cousin, the peanut butter and banana sandwich, which had the exotic distinction of being tasty when grilled. In college, when my mother was no longer around to relieve me of the difficult chore of slicing the banana and placing it between two slices of bread with the peanut butter, I began to slather the peanut butter directly onto a whole banana.  And then came the discovery of peanut butter and banana bread, peanut butter and banana cookies and various adorable peanut butter and banana treats that fill up Pinterest board after Pinterest board.  Delicious in all known forms, the peanut butter and banana combo somehow transforms the tedious breakfast item of the banana into a decadent treat by practically obliterating all nutritional value of the fruit and filling your mouth with sweet banana and gooey peanut butter flavors that somehow perfectly harmonize.

And just as the experience of eating B&J's Peanut Butter Jam Session remarkably mimics the tasty and comforting experience of eating a gooey PB&J, Ben & Jerry's Banana Peanut Butter Greek Froyo accurately replicates the taste of peanut butter spread on a banana. It's not quite as gooey as a warm peanut butter and banana sandwich fresh off the grill, and it somehow manages to keep that lighter flavor that characterizes Ben & Jerry's Greek Froyo flavors. Yet it also tastes rich, even decadent with its peanut butter flavor and its ability to evoke memories of another classic childhood treat.  I think this is achieved because the froyo itself is more strongly flavored with banana and a lighter hint of peanut butter, and then there are thin veins of peanut butter swirls throughout the pint that add a new level of richness.

Ultimately, Banana Peanut Butter Greek Froyo is a simple blend of two flavors, in perfect balance and harmony.  I award this flavor 5 stars and predict that it will remain one of my go-to 3 AM snacks for many long and happy years.

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.

Ben & Jerry's Chubby Hubby

Digging in to a pint of Ben & Jerry's Chubby Hubby is a lot like embarking on a treasure hunt. With full-sized pretzel bites covered in chocolate and buried throughout the pint, this flavor has the largest chunks of any B&J's ice cream that I have sampled thus far, and you really do have to dig for those pretzels to get them out of there. While some people may mind that the pretzels make Chubby Hubby fairly difficult to scoop, I enjoyed the experience of having to put a little more of my muscle to work in order to retrieve my buried treasure from the pint. Once extracted from the vanilla malt ice cream with fudge and peanut butter swirls, those pretzel bites are a great reward. They remain surprisingly light, airy and crisp in the ice cream, and provide just a hint of salty flavor to complement all the sweetness. Given my opinion that the chunkiest flavors provide the quintessential Ben & Jerry's experience, I consider Chubby Hubby to be a paragon of the brand.

And then there is the ice cream itself.  While I'm not a fan of plain vanilla ice cream, this vanilla malt has enough fudge and peanut butter swirls to satisfy my craving for something rich, without being overpowering in its decadence. In my first few months of taste testing ice creams, I've learned that I passionately love any flavor with peanut butter chunks, cups or flavor swirls, whether or not the PB is combined with chocolate. It should go without saying, though, that chocolate is an added bonus, and so Chubby Hubby gets a high rating in huge part because of the tasty peanut butter and fudge swirls.

I have to note, however, that at 340 calories per serving, Chubby Hubby is one of the Ben & Jerry's flavors that you have to work even harder/longer to burn when it's time to exercise. Many of my favorite B&J's flavors run from 260 to 290 per serving, and that difference in calories can really start to add up, especially if you want to enjoy more than one serving. As my husband pointed out, Chubby Hubby is aptly named, because "that is what you are going to have if you keep buying all this ice cream!" (The poor man has it so hard, putting up with a wife who constantly wants him to sample yet another delicious Ben & Jerry's flavor.) But because of the higher calorie content, I found that one of the advantages to having to dig through the pint of Chubby Hubby for the pretzel bites is that it takes longer to eat a single half-cup serving, so I felt more satisfied after eating a smaller amount of the ice cream. So the treasure hunt when eating Chubby Hubby is more than just a fun experience - it can also help you stretch that pint across an extra day or two and consume fewer calories at one sitting. At least in theory.

Overall, I give Chubby Hubby a four star rating, which for me is based primarily on the combo of peanut butter and fudge, but also on the satisfying reward of crunchy pretzel bites. I just don't think I'll be buying this flavor quite as often, since on a bad day, I may not be able to resist eating more than one serving.

Ben & Jerry's Red Velvet Cake

Red Velvet Cake (the actual cake, not the Ben & Jerry's flavor) is something of a mystery. Depending on the exact recipe, red velvet cake typically contains buttermilk and cocoa.  But the mystery is that it's neither chocolate cake (although some people think that it tastes similar) or vanilla cake (although the dessert definitely contains some of that universally loved flavor).  But if it's not chocolate or vanilla cake, carrot cake or cheesecake, what flavor is it, exactly?  It tastes like... red velvet? A mouthful of fuzzy fabric that is typically used to make bell bottoms for hippies and Halloween costumes for Renaissance princess wannabes?  It's a strange name for such a delicious dessert, to say the least.

The name of the dessert seems to come not from its flavoring agents, but rather from the red food coloring that is added to the cake batter, and from the overall pleasing flavor and texture of the cake which perhaps might bring to mind the phrase "as smooth as velvet."  There's my best guess, although a little internet research yielded an additional interesting tidbit. According to Wikipedia, while most red velvet cake recipes use either red food coloring or beet juice to enhance the red tint of the cake batter, the reaction of acidic vinegar and buttermilk in the recipe reveals the red anthocyanin in cocoa - inspiring the name - and also keeps the cake moist, light and fluffy. Wikipedia doesn't mention why the dessert is called "velvet cake" though.

Despite the mystery that nags at my curiosity, Red Velvet Cake is an amazingly delicious dessert, even if it lacks a specific flavor that is readily identifiable to people without food science degrees, culinary training, or food critics with extremely refined palettes.  You don't have to be an expert in taste testing to know that this sh*t is good.

When enjoying a pint of Ben & Jerry's Red Velvet Cake, my gastronomic experience was in fact quite similar. It's not vanilla or chocolate flavored, but it tastes remarkably like that unidentifiable delicious red velvet flavor. (My husband also suggested that it called to mind that other amorphous but beloved confection of my childhood, Funfetti Cake.)  The ice cream itself is sweet and pleasing, and then - oh rapture! - there is a cream cheese frosting swirl throughout. Since cream cheese frosting is one of my favorite ways to top off any kind of cake, my rating of Ben & Jerry's Red Velvet Cake just shot up even further, even though the flavor of the swirl isn't overly distinct from the red velvet/funfetti cake flavor. The cream cheese frosting swirl serves more to enhance and sweeten the red velvet cake base, blending together to produce a fun dessert flavor. This flavor isn't as decadent and heavy as many of the B&J's flavors that I typically love, which often contain various more highly caloric combinations of chocolate and peanut butter, but it's nice to find a flavor that I enjoy so much that provides variety in my usual lineup.

The one downside to this flavor is the chunks of actual red velvet cake, which don't seem to take too kindly to being frozen. While the hearty chunks of brownie in Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Fudge Brownie are nice and gooey, these chunks of red velvet cake are more dry and don't seem to retain the original flavor of the cake very well. This makes sense, though, when you consider that brownies are more dense and would hold their moisture better than red velvet cake, which is lighter and fluffier. I would venture to guess that brownies are just better suited for inclusion in ice cream than a cake that is supposed to be airy and fluffy.

That flaw aside, Ben & Jerry's Red Velvet Cake gets 4.5 stars and is pretty high up on my list of favorite flavors. Kudos to Ben & Jerry's for creating such an accurate reproduction of a mysterious flavor.

Ben & Jerry's S'mores Ice Cream

Time to taste test another variation of Ben & Jerry's rich chocolate ice cream. Oh, what a difficult life I lead!

Like Ben & Jerry's Phish Food ice cream, which I recently tried, their S'mores flavor promises a tasty-sounding marshmallow swirl running through chocolate ice cream, this time accompanied by fudge chunks and a graham cracker swirl to mimic the taste of everyone's favorite campfire treat. And just like my experience with Phish Food, the enticement of the marshmallow swirl in S'mores ended up being a disappointment.  I can barely taste this supposed marshmallow swirl, if at all.  Where present, I think it may make the overall texture of the ice cream somewhat more pleasantly gooey, but I can't detect a discernable difference in flavor due to the inclusion of the marshmallow swirl in either Phish Food or S'mores. Maybe I've been sampling a batch or two of these flavors that were made when the Ben & Jerry's factory was running low on marshmallow goodness? Or maybe marshmallow is just not a strong enough flavor to compete with the amazing rich Ben & Jerry's chocolate ice cream that I love so much. Perhaps I need to taste test a non-chocolate flavor of B&J's with a marshmallow swirl at some point soon. In any case, I have decided that I will no longer consider the inclusion of a marshmallow swirl as a significant selling point for any Ben & Jerry's flavor.

It almost goes without saying at this point that I love Ben & Jerry's basic but oh-so-rich chocolate ice cream, and the inclusion of fudge chunks is almost always a virtue, so I'll just move right on to the other feature of the S'mores flavor - the graham cracker swirl. While I really enjoy the graham cracker flavor, I'm less than excited about having the somewhat gritty texture of a graham cracker mixed throughout my bowl of creamy ice cream. While true to the actual texture of graham crackers, the swirl in S'mores is more gritty than the cookie swirl in the Ben & Jerry's Milk & Cookies flavor, which took me a while to get used to - but I must admit that I now truly enjoy the chocolate chip cookie swirl in the latter flavor. I don't think that I will ever truly enjoy the graham cracker grit swirled throughout S'mores, though.

To be fair, my husband had a different experience when sampling B&J's S'mores.  While he thought that the flavor of the marshmallow swirl was certainly less prominent than the chocolate flavor of the ice cream, he could easily detect the marshmallow flavoring, which he enjoyed quite a bit.  When I asked him what he thought about the gritty graham cracker swirl, he said that he had barely tasted the graham cracker at all.  So strangely enough, even though we were eating from the same pint, my husband and I experienced the graham cracker and the marshmallow in opposite ways - I got too much graham cracker grit and not enough marshmallow taste, while he didn't taste the graham cracker and thought that the marshmallow was strong enough.  I'm not really sure how to account for that, other than differences in taste buds.

In the end, though, my personal rating is determined by my own experience of the ice cream.  So while I appreciate the overall brilliance of the idea to create an ice cream flavor that mimics s'mores, I feel like this is one of those Ben & Jerry's flavors that less-than-optimally delivers on its promise.  I would suggest to Ben and Jerry that they ought to put their top food scientists back to work on this flavor, though.  If they could bring out the marshmallow flavor more and smooth the texture of the graham cracker swirl, I would be more than a little excited to try the beta version of S'mores. But as it stands, this isn't a flavor that I plan on purchasing much, because with so many other Ben & Jerry's variations on chocolate ice cream, why bother to put up with the bothersome gritty graham cracker texture?  S'mores gets 3.5 stars and a slightly sad, disappointed shake of my head.

Ben & Jerry's Liz Lemon Greek Froyo

Welcome to the world of Ben & Jerry's Greek Froyo. While in the same solar system as Ben & Jerry's rich ice cream, their Greek Froyo has a lighter taste while still managing to keep a very similar creamy texture, more smooth and delicious than any frozen yogurt than I have tasted ever before. (It is important to keep in mind, though, that I have been deprived of the joy of eating ice cream for nearly ten years, so perhaps the entire froyo industry has been revolutionized since the days of my childhood when my grandparents would take me and my brother to The Dairy-O on the corner for a soft serve twist. I should probably taste test some other brands of frozen yogurt at some point soon, before I finalize that statement as my official opinion. Just for the sake of comparison... of course.)

Liz Lemon is the first of the Ben & Jerry's Greek Froyo flavors that I taste tested, on the recommendation of my best friend out in Seattle.  While other friends have been suggesting that I try their favorite rich, chunky flavors of B&J's ice cream, she chimed in with an excited vote for Liz Lemon, stating that for her, "less is more." (I'm assuming that she means that she's not a huge fan of all the chunks in many of Ben & Jerry's flavors, which for me is one of the highlights of the brand. But apparently she's not alone in her dislike of what I consider to be exciting chunky ice cream goodness. Another friend of mine commented that she feels as though Ben & Jerry's just plops a whole lot of stuff into their flavors and there is just too much going on in their ice cream for her tastes.  And while I can't really fathom actually disliking chunky ice creams, I can certainly understand the desire for more simple flavors, at least some of the time. And Liz Lemon is the epitome of a rich and creamy yet more simple variety of frozen dairy bliss.

This flavor only has two elements - the lemon and the blueberry lavender swirl. I had recently sampled some Lemon Meringue Pie Gelato (more on that subject at a later date) and so I was already familiar with the similarly delicious light lemon flavor that provides the base for Liz Lemon, which is closer to a lemon custard or pudding than to the sweet but still tangy flavor of an actual lemon meringue pie. The flavor isn't as heavy handed as a custard or pudding, though - as I mentioned earlier, Ben & Jerry's Froyo manages to remain creamy, even rich, while also mysteriously managing to be much lighter tasting. The result is a delightful taste that in no way resembles the experience of eating an actual lemon.

But what sets Ben & Jerry's Liz Lemon apart is, of course, the blueberry lavender swirl.  I had been skeptical about lavender in my ice cream - I suspected that it might leave my mouth tasting rather like old lady hand soap. But then I tried Blueberry Lavender Gelato at Cold Fusion in Newport, Rhode Island this summer, and all my doubts were dispelled.  I don't know quite how to describe the deliciousness that is the flavor of blueberry lavender, but the lavender somehow gently sweetens the blueberry flavor, more subtlety than if refined sugar is used as the sweetening agent. Of course both the Cold Fusion Gelato and the Ben & Jerry's Froyo make use of refined sugar as well. But somehow the lavender, combined in particular with the naturally tart flavors of lemon and blueberry, ends us being light, sweet, fresh and more healthy-tasting. (And let's just be clear that said healthy-tasting, not that this flavor is actually healthy. Although Ben & Jerry's Froyo is at least 70 calories lower per serving than the B&J's ice cream flavors with the lowest calorie counts, and nearly 200 calories lower than some of the richest ice cream flavors.)

Overall, I'm giving Liz Lemon a 4 star rating, but basically only because I still prefer decadent chocolate ice creams and other rich flavors over lighter, fruity flavors a majority of the time.  But if I'm in the mood for something a little more refreshing, Liz Lemon is at the top of my list.  I've discovered that it makes for a great breakfast!

Ben & Jerry's Nutty Caramel Swirl

When I made a special pilgrimage to 7-Eleven (of which there are sadly none located close to my home) to pick up their exclusive Ben & Jerry's flavor Nutty Caramel Swirl, I learned an important lesson in ice cream economics - when a retailer has the market cornered on Ben & Jerry's, they can charge even more exorbitant prices than the already pricey $4 per pint that B&J's costs on average. After standing in line behind an adorable but frustrating elderly gentleman who slowly counted out each penny in good old fashioned change for his purchase, while I stood fidgeting and hoping that the other 3 pints of Ben & Jerry's in my car hadn't yet turned into puddles of delicious stain on the floor of the passenger side, I ended up paying $5.50 for a pint of Nutty Caramel Swirl. My thoughts as I left the 7-Eleven were running along the lines of "this flavor had better be worth that $5.50 and any additional monetary losses that I incur in melted ice cream and car mat cleaning."

Later that evening, I was trying to decide which of the four new flavors to sample, when the description of Nutty Caramel Swirl caught my eye - "nougat ice cream with peanuts, fudge flakes and a salty caramel swirl." Hmmm. "What the h*ll is nougat ice cream?" I asked my husband, a little bit perturbed. "Nougat is that chocolate stuff in candy bars," he answered, nonplussed despite my confusion and somewhat irrational annoyance with Ben & Jerry's for labeling a package with an unhelpful description.  "So it probably tastes like chocolate," he reasoned. Hmmm. I opened the pint and stared at the ice cream, which resembled the rich chocolate Ben & Jerry's ice cream not a bit. "I'm not convinced," I told him - but he had stopped caring by that point. So I was left on my own to make this all-important flavor determination. Nougat flavored ice cream was puzzling, mysterious and intriguing,  so clearly I had found the flavor to sample for the evening's taste test. Maybe there was a very good reason that Ben & Jerry's had chosen a less readily identifiable way of describing this flavor - the more curious you are about the flavor, the more you have to try it and the more willing you are to shell out that $5.50 per pint for an Exclusive Flavor.

Nougat ice cream doesn't quite live up to its mysterious name, though - as I ate up a third of the pint of Nutty Caramel Swirl, I didn't detect that it had a distinctive flavor. Instead, the indeterminate nougat ice cream gave center stage to the chunks of peanut and fudge that were enough to make this flavor positively crunchy. The peanut flavor is distinct from other Ben & Jerry's flavors that I've sampled with peanut butter flavoring - there is something very different from the strong nutty taste (thus the name of this flavor) from the sweeter, creamier flavor of peanut butter in B&J's Peanut Butter Jam Session or Banana Peanut Butter Greek Froyo, for example.

But while the "Nutty" in the name "Nutty Caramel Swirl" is the extremely accurate part of the flavor's name, slapping the word "Caramel" in the title is far less accurate, at least according to what I cpuld taste.  The caramel swirl is underwhelming, to say the least, and without much caramel, this ends up being a far less sweet flavor of ice cream. Not that it's bad to have a flavor that doesn't make your teeth buzz and immediately fall out of your jaw, but it's something to keep in mind when selecting your pint of ice cream, especially before you fork over that $5.50 at 7-Eleven. But if you want a more chunky, crunchy quintessential Ben & Jerry's ice cream experience, this is the flavor for you, since it even tops Chunky Monkey with its extreme crunch favor. It's not just the peanuts that are crunchy, either - those fudge chunks are equally loud as you chomp down on them.

Verdict? Nutty Caramel Swirl is a tasty flavor with a lot of satisfying chunks, and is worth the occasional pilgrimage to 7-Eleven and $5.50 per pint if you're in the mood for something particularly nutty. But is this going to join the regular rotaation in my freezer? Nah. At 3.5 stars, Nutty Caramel Swirl loses out to Phish Food with its higher chocolate quotient and stronger gooey caramel flavoring almost every time.

Ben & Jerry's Phish Food

After a long and overwhelming day at work, I went digging through the Ben & Jerry's pints stacked in my freezer, trying to decide which flavor would best soothe my nerves and help repair my mood. It had to be something decadent, a flavor with some serious chocolate. Because as all women know (at least instinctively), cocoa has a significantly uplifting effect on a person's brain chemistry and mood. This has been scientifically proven, so don't bother to argue with me about the medical and psychological value of chocolate ice cream. Ben & Jerry's can be a very effective treatment for many ailments, both physical and emotional - it's a fact.

I decided to try Phish Food. To be honest, the name of this flavor has always kind of turned me off because it always makes me think of the brightly colored Beta fish named Buffy, Angel and Spike that my husband and I owned for several years and who met an untimely death without attracting my attention for several weeks because I was in grad school at the time. But that's a tangent that I don't need to follow any further, because this is a blog about ice cream, not funny stories about pet mishaps.

The description on the carton of Phish Food, which reads, "chocolate ice cream with gooey, marshmallow swirls, caramel swirls and fudge fish," sounded like it would be more than decadent enough.  I was fairly certain that it would be more rich than my current favorite flavor of Ben & Jerry's chocolate ice cream, which is Chocolate Fudge Brownie.  And I was not wrong.  While I couldn't distinctly taste the marshmallow swirls (which was a bit of a disappointment), the typically rich nature of Ben & Jerry's chocolate ice cream, in this case laced with gooey caramel, is enough to send me happily into a benign sugar coma.

Then there are those fudge fish. The flavor's phish/fish theme seems to me to be a true oddity that comes out of left field. (Why associate your ice cream with seafood?!?!! What were Ben and Jerry thinking?!) Yet when it comes right down to it, those fudge fish are big chunks of chocolate - bigger by far than the fudge flakes in Cherry Garcia and bigger than even the hefty little bricks of chocolate in Chunky Monkey. Well done, Ben and Jerry. Well done.

In summary, Phish Food is a truly decadent flavor that I may not crave constantly, but that I will definitely buy when my hormones go all wonky at a certain time of the month. This flavor gets 4 stars for its gooey and delicious combo of chocolate and caramel.

Ben & Jerry's Volun-Tiramisu

I had to sample Ben & Jerry's Volun-Tiramisu several times across the span of more than a week to decide exactly what I thought about this flavor. That's pretty unusual - typically I like to have a couple of servings before I fully decide how many stars to give to an ice cream in order to confirm my initial reaction, but sometimes I can even decide after one sitting what I think and feel about an ice cream flavor. The flavors that I dislike are almost harder, though. I feel a certain loyalty to Ben & Jerry's, and it's almost as though I want to like a flavor so much that I force myself to try it several times before I can admit to myself that I just don't like it.  Volun-Tiramisu is the extreme example of my near inability to admit that Ben & Jerry's has come up with a dud.

The "coffee mascarpone ice cream with cocoa dusted coffee rum lady finger pieces" seems like it would be a good idea, and maybe I would like the coffee mascarpone ice cream itself, without the lady fingers.  It even seems like a very likely possibility to me that I would enjoy a flavor like that immensely.  But alas, we'll never know, because those dry, somewhat chalky tasting lady fingers are mixed indiscriminately throughout the ice cream, leaving no opportunity for me to fully appreciate the coffee mascarpone flavor.  Every time I sampled the pint, I came away with a strange sort of dry, gritty taste in my mouth.

Ben & Jerry's, you should know better. The pieces or chunks in your ice cream, while one of my favorite parts of the B&J's experience, need to be at least somewhat moist to blend well with the ice cream.  The best examples of the most successful Ben & Jerry's chunks include the moist cookie dough in both Half Baked and Cookie Dough ice cream, the brownie chunks in both Half Baked and Chocolate Fudge Brownie, the fudge and walnut chunks in Chunky Monkey, the toffee pieces in Coffee Toffee Bar Crunch,  and the fudge running throughout many of the new 2014 Core flavors. While the toffee, fudge chunks and walnuts aren't as moist as the brownies, cookie dough and fudge core, they are meant to be harder and give the ice cream more of a crunch. The toffee, walnuts and fudge chunks are by no means dry, though, and they don't interrupt your experience of the creamy ice cream. Even the somewhat gritty cookie swirl blended throughout Milk & Cookies manages to be moist and pleasing. But the lady fingers in Volun-Tiramisu just make the entirety or each spoonful a somewhat strange, dry experience, earning this flavor 2 stars and a grimace.

Special note: this flavor is carried exclusively at Target.