Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Fudge Brownie 'Wich

I bet you thought that was it for new ice cream from Ben & Jerry's? I know I did, but stuffed behind the Magnums in Tesco I found a whole shelf full of individual Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream sandwiches! I did notice a chocolate 'Wich on the press release Ben & Jerry's sent out but I hadn't seen or heard anything other than that darker looking 'Wich in the background of a photo. It makes sense though, in the UK especially, I know if you asked most of my friends and family to name 2 Ben & Jerry's flavours, they'd say Cookie Dough and Chocolate Fudge Brownie - they're the classics. 

The wrapper is a bit busted, the Chocolate Fudge Brownie 'Wich is sold individually rather than in the boxes of 3 or 8 like the Cookie Dough, this is probably so it's put in the smaller ice cream cases but my local Tesco saw fit to dump as many as they could in the big freezers, hence why it isn't as pretty looking as its Cookie Dough bro. 

Chocolate Ice Cream with Brownies Sandwiched Between Chewy Double Chocolate Chip Cookies 

Its the same size as the larger Cookie Dough 'Wich and just as sturdy, if a little melted with a chocolate brownie scent rather than outright chocolate. 

I stored it in the same freezer at home as the Cookie Dough 'Wich but the Chocolate Fudge Brownie was a lot softer to begin with and had a much faster melt, this could be due to the ice cream itself but it's much more likely my Tesco were up to their old tricks of leaving the frozen products sitting in the aisles for a few hours before actually shelving them. 

Taking a bite the consistency was again the first thing I noticed, due to the fact it had already half melted it was a lot softer to eat - the Cookie Dough was soft too but still had a firmness to it whereas this felt a lot more like melted ice cream. Still I think I'm blaming Tesco for that. 

Despite my first mouthful including the cookie and the ice cream the first thing I both felt and tasted were the large brownie chunks inside the ice cream. Full of flavour with a soft, chewy texture just like in the tubs and despite Tesco's best efforts no freezer burn whatsoever. But we all know Ben & Jerry's have good quality control! 

The ice cream is very much the same story, typical Ben & Jerry's chocolate ice cream. Thick and creamy with a lovely chocolate taste although it isn't quite as strong as in the pints. Interestingly according to Ben & Jerry's website it does have a different recipe to the tubs but that isn't necessarily a bad thing, as it is it's chocolate on chocolate on chocolate so an ice cream with the same strength of flavour as the tubs might well end up overdoing it. 

The cookies were very different, for starters as you can see they're chocolate based. Initially I was a little disappointed (I never thought I'd say that in a B&J review!) as based on the colour I expected a strong cocoa flavour like a bourbon biscuit (or an Oreo if you must). Once I thought about it though, they aren't biscuits like a Bourbon or Oreo - they're a double chocolate chip cookie - the flavour was fine. Hopefully you understand what I mean when I say they're chocolate flavoured not cocoa, as strange as that sounds. It's a very nice chocolate flavour with chocolate chips scattered about, not too many but enough to provide smaller and stronger bursts of chocolate flavour - as if you didn't already have enough! 

As I mentioned previously in this review and in the Cookie Dough, despite efforts otherwise, they had no sogginess or freezer burn but they are completely different in texture, softer than in the Cookie Dough 'Wich and most shop bought Cookies. If this was because of the way Tesco had stored them, then I can't thank Tesco enough and recommend you leave yours out for a while before freezing - they ended up with a consistency a lot more like a brownie than a cookie and as it fits in with the theme of the 'Wich, it was much more appropriate than a harder cookie. 

Rating:

Another very tasty 'Wich from Ben & Jerrys, of the two I think the Cookie Dough has the edge just slightly as there is a greater contrast between ice cream, cookie dough chunks and actual cookies where in the Chocolate Fudge Brownie it's a little more blurred. That's by no means a criticism on the Chocolate Fudge - a big chocolatey, chewy gooey mess but that's just how I like it! 

8/10    

Ben & Jerry's Cookie Dough 'Wich

Halle-freaking-lujah! After a loooong search I finally found the Ben & Jerry's Cookie Dough 'Wich. I mentioned a while ago that the my blog evolved from an idea to try every single flavour and product from Ben & Jerry's. I first saw a Ben & Jerry's ice cream sandwich about 4 years ago in a shop on one of my jobs, I don't have the type of job where I can stop for an ice cream so I decided to go back on the way home from work. It was gone. And I've never seen it again until now! 

I wrote in my Ambrosia Frozen Custard review "more fool you if you pay full price for Ben & Jerry's".. Well I'm a mug because I paid a (disgusting) £4 for THREE small-ish ice cream sandwiches. Ouch, I kind of hoped they would be awful so I wouldn't be tempted to buy any more! 

Vanilla Ice Cream with Cookie Dough sandwiched between two Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies 

I say small-ish but that's greed, they're fairly sized, maybe not £4 fairly sized but pretty filling and big enough for a cookie and ice cream hit. 

I was fairly surprised at the amount of ice cream as it's a decent blob sitting in between the cookies. My cookies weren't swirled as is on the front of the box but half and half and pleasingly the two were on opposite sides so I got an even mouthful of each. It smelt a lot like Cookie Dough Ice Cream and that's nothing to scoff at - it might be an oldie but its definitely a goodie! B&J know better than to mess with the classics. 

As you may be aware, I don't rate Oreos so I've never had the Oreo Ice Cream Sandwich and I can't remember eating any before so I wasn't sure what to expect with the cookies themselves. Happily they were pretty much perfect. Not only were they absolutely delicious but they had a normal cookie texture - no frozen feel and no defrosted sogginess. The only acceptable time for a soggy biscuit is after dunking! 

The ice cream is as good as ever, B&J's usual quality with a wonderful vanilla flavour and large chewy cookie dough chunks - the same, I'm guessing, that are used in the Cookie Dough Ice Cream. 

One slight difference on the tubs is the consistency of the ice cream. I don't think I'd be able to physically chew the normal stuff straight out of the freezer but it was soft enough to in the 'Wich, it was just right actually, firm enough to stay nice and sturdy in the cookies right down to the last bite and no melting mess everywhere. I shouldn't be surprised really, Ben & Jerry's normally think everything through! 

Rating:

Very, very nice. Sadly as there isn't too much ice cream Mr.1T and his lactose intolerance managed it just fine and he's fighting me over the last one! I really hope they go on offer somewhere in the very near future. 

9/10

Ben & Jerry's Cookie Dough S'Wich Up

I know I claim to have a lot of favourite foods, but when it comes down to it I have two great loves: Ice Cream and Pizza. In fact the whole reason this blog even exists is because of a very successful mission to eat my way through every flavour of Ben & Jerry's. 

I'm not exaggerating when I say we eat pizza three times a week and we always get Pizza Hut on a Sunday. I'm loyal to Pizza Hut, there is an authentic Italian pizza place near me but they don't deliver and due to a large Italian community it's impossible to inside the place to get a take-away or a table. The last time we went we counted 30 people queueing outside just to get in the door! Domino's we usually avoid like the plague, its too expensive and the pizzas are too small so I usually throw the untold amounts of leaflets we get straight in the bin. This week a strange photo of a tub of Ben & Jerry's caught my eye!

Cookie Dough S'Wich Up

Vanilla Ice Cream with a Chocolatey Cookie Swirl, Chocolatey Cookie Sandwiches & Cookie Dough Chunks. 

Cookie Dough S'Wich Up is a Domino's exclusive, limited edition flavour. It's only being sold until February so if you're after one you'd better make it quick, however the ingredients are in a few different European languages and it doesn't say anywhere exclusively made for Domino's. I'm waiting for a reply from Ben & Jerry's but hopefully its having a limited run in Domino's then being rolled out across the country. 

Look:

It looks a lot like Clever Cookies due to darker biscuits being used, the usual cookie dough chunks are still included in abundance and the light brown, creamy dough pops out against the grey mix of black biscuit and vanilla ice cream. 

Smell: 

It smells like Bourbon biscuits. And that's me sold. Bourbons smash Oreos, I don't care. An Oreo is fine when I'm in the mood, but for a chocolate cream biscuit it's all about the Bourbon. Why are we all so hung up on Oreos anyway, they're just a branded Romany/Gypsy Cream with a less racist name..

Taste:

There are 4 individual parts to this flavour, the first is one of the least used, most under-appreciated and actually faintest tasting in this particular pint - vanilla ice cream. There isn't too much I can say that I've not said in every other B&J review, its thick and creamy with a delicious flavour that would still be as delicious without any additional extras in the pint. I'm mainly going by previous experience though as it was totally overwhelmed by everything else. Vanilla was the perfect choice for Cookie Dough S'wich Up as a stronger flavoured base would be pointless. 

In the standard Cookie Dough flavour its all about the chunks of actual cookie dough, in S'wich Up they're lagging at the bottom of the ingredients list - this pint only includes 3%. They are exactly the same as the original; a delicious cookie flavour with a wonderful gritty and perfect doughy texture. 

A chocolatey cookie swirl takes up another 5% and this is where the Bourbon Biscuit scent came from. It's nothing like the core in the What-A-Lotta-Chocolate Cookie Core, that was more of a chocolate core with bits of cookie included whereas this is pure chocolate biscuit ground up and swirled throughout the ice cream. It's gritty and crunchy and tastes like actual chocolate biscuit not chocolate with little bits of biscuit included. 

Last but definitely not least, are the chocolatey sandwich cookies. I know Ben & Jerry's have a very well earned reputation for not scrimping on the ingredients but this is ridiculous, I had four or five full sized Oreo style biscuits! I don't think they're actual Oreo as I'm sure it'd be printed all over the tubs and stamped on the biscuit itself but the taste was pretty much the same. I don't know how they manage it but the consistency stayed spot on, I'd expect a biscuit from a packet to go soggy if I left it to sit in some rapidly melting ice cream but it retained a perfectly crunchy bite and I could even distinguish between the firm biscuits, soft ice cream and creamy 'sandwich cookie' filling. 

This is a biscuit lovers dream. The mixture of 3 different types of biscuit or cookie seems like it should be too much but I couldn't get enough, all three have delicious individual flavours and contrasting textures. I'd buy ice cream flavoured with any of the three alone but one with all Bourbon biscuits, cookie dough and Oreos together? I'm in heaven!! 

This was the last one in my local Domino's so I'm off to find another store!

9/10 

Ben & Jerry's Cinnamon Buns

Caramel ice cream with a Cinnamon a Swirl & Chunks of Cinnamon Bun Dough 

After I tried the previous two Ben & Jerry's flavours and read Lucy's review, I couldn't wait to try the Cinnamon Buns - even more so after the last couple of products I've reviewed have contained cinnamon and I'm getting a real taste for it. 

I'm lucky (unlucky?) enough to live in the shadow of one of Tescos flagship stores and so we tend to get new stuff a little earlier but this was nowhere to be found. I finally found it in a tiny express store but since I ate it I've seen it in lots of different shops, typical! 

I can't say anything about the ice cream that I haven't before; thick, creamy, super rich and I've only ever had one freezer burnt pint (Morrisons, I'm looking at you. You shouldn't have to pick through 5 inches of ice to get the tubs!!). The base ice cream is caramel flavoured and is one of my favourites from Ben & Jerry's. It's delicious as always, nice and sweet with a good caramel flavour that is great on its own but doesn't overpower any additional flavours or mix ins. 

I came to the Cinnamon Bun chunks before the swirl and I loved them. Apparently there's only supposed to be 11% in each pint but I had loads and they were all huge. They're firmer than the cookie dough pieces in other flavours, and have a slightly gritty feel. The cinnamon flavour is lovely, not too strong with a slight spice and goes beautifully with the caramel ice cream. 

The Cinnamon Swirl threw me at first, all the recent swirls in the new releases have been cookie swirls so I guess I was half expecting that but it's more of a syrupy sauce. I really liked the cookie swirls but this one might just become a new favourite. It's very thick and so gooey that most spoonfuls ended up leaving a cinnamon swirl trail stringing back into the tub! The cinnamon flavour is stronger in the swirl than the chunks and again has a nice, warm spiced flavour with little gritty cinnamon flecks that I could feel as well as taste. 

I bought two tubs and Mr.1T kindly 'helped' me to review by eating the other and we both agree that this is a really good new flavour (he is still undecided on Pumpkin cheesecake) and this could very well be one of my new favourites however, our one small gripe is that both of us had a lot more of the cinnamon swirl in the bottom half and it would have been nice to be a bit more evenly distributed. 

Happily the packaging also says new, no Christmas snowflakes or limited edition anywhere so I think this is here to stay! 

8/10 

Ben & Jerry's Pumpkin Cheesecake

God I love Ben & Jerry's. Last year we had a couple of winter seasonal flavours; Joy To The Swirled and Minter Wonderland. This years offerings are Pumpkin Cheesecake and Cinnamon Buns, I'm yet to find Cinnamon Buns but in the meantime the lovely Lucy has and has reviewed it here. 

Pumpkin cheesecake is a Pumpkin Cheesecake ice cream with a Cookie swirl. If you read the tub the ice cream is actually sweet cinnamon spiced ice cream but more on that later. 

I don't mess about when it comes to Ben & Jerry's so got stuck right in, the top of my tub was purely ice cream, the cookie swirl was yet to be discovered. I can't remember eating pumpkin before so this was a new flavour to me, the cheesecake flavour is obvious, so good news for any cheesecake fans. The pumpkin flavour is actually really nice, before I could take much notice of that though I found the little specks of pumpkin pieces dotted throughout. They add a little more pumpkin flavour and the texture stands out through the thick creamy ice cream. 

I didn't know before I sat down to review that the pumpkin is cinnamon spiced but I could definitely taste it. It's not a strong cinnamon but it adds a warm spice and makes it a bit of a deeper flavour. 

This is a sweet ice cream don't get me wrong, but the warmth of the cinnamon means it's not overly sweet. Funnily enough it does taste like I'd imagine Autumn to if seasons had flavours - winter would be mint obviously! I can see why it's such a massive flavour in the USA at this time of year. 

It didn't take long for the cookie swirl to appear and it's the same type of swirl as Ben & Jerry's used in the recent Cookie Core tubs. It's one of my favourite cores of them all, I can't choose between that and the caramel. It has a thick, gritty feel and the cookie flavour is spot on. 

I was apprehensive about a pumpkin ice cream but once again I couldn't have been more wrong. This is why Ben and Jerry make ice cream and not me I suppose! The pumpkin and cheesecake flavours go together so well and the little bursts of cinnamon every now and then are the icing on the cake. This actually reminded me very slightly (because of the cinnamon and cookie swirl) of the Speculoos Core flavour, and I'd like to try a version of this flavour with a Speculoos (or Lotus biscuit) flavoured core. 

And now I know I like pumpkin! 

8/10