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 

Cadbury Minis Mix

I know I've been very anti-Cadbury lately, but for me, chocolate at Easter has to be a Cadbury Buttons Egg. I'm going to be buying myself a few nice eggs but if my mum doesn't get me my buttons there'll be words had...

We're all aware of the controversy surrounding Creme Eggs and I remember finding them quite sickly last year, so I swore I wouldn't buy any this year. I did buy some mini Daim Eggs and wasn't impressed but I'd heard good things about the Dairy Milk and Oreo Eggs. Asda are selling bags with a mix of all 4 inside and my promises went out the window. The bag is "Great for egg hunts!" but that's not going to happen - 1) they're all going in my mouth so I'm not going to the trouble of hiding them and 2) there's not really that many and they're on the small side. 

My first compliment to Cadbury in a very long time is that there was an even mix. Hopefully this is the case in every bag and I didn't just get lucky but I had 4 of each egg except for the Oreo, of which I had 5. 

Creme Egg 

This just makes me sad, it was actually my least favourite of the four. I might associate Easter chocolate with Buttons but I bet for most people it'd be Creme Eggs. These are just an insult to the proper Creme Eggs and in fact I find them offensive. A thin, soft chocolate shell with too much fondant centre. I've moaned Cadbury milk chocolate has gone down the pan but I couldn't taste it over the sickly centre. I've still not had a full sized Creme Egg to compare but I wouldn't eat these sugar bombs if you paid me. My ever present sugar fiend helper Mr.1T declared these the best out of the bag but anyone who reads my blog will know his opinion means diddly squat as he has the taste buds of a diabetic four year old. A little side note, these are the only mini egg not made with Dairy Milk.. Surely if they can use it with the other three eggs they can here, I think it'd benefit from a milkiness rather than a sugary chocolate as well as the sugary centre. Yuck. 

Dairy Milk 

Hmmm.. These have thrown me. Cadbury have always been adamant that the Dairy Milk hasn't changed, only the shape of the bars but the actual taste of the bars have suggested otherwise. These little eggs just might prove they are (half) telling the truth. They are sweeter than I ever remember Dairy Milk being, although that could be a case of 'grown up' taste buds, but they are also nicer than any recent Cadbury Dairy Milk I've eaten. Thick feeling, rich and with a milky flavour. A huge improvement on Dairy Milk in bar form. 

Dairy Milk Daim 

I had a bag of Dairy Milk Daim eggs a couple of weeks ago and I said they had too much chocolate, not enough Daim. They're solid Dairy Milk eggs with only 4% crunchy almond caramel pieces and as you can see, although there is a big difference visibly to the pure Dairy Milk eggs, there aren't any real noticeable almond caramel pieces. One of the reasons I love a Daim is the texture, and it's not really present in the mini eggs with barely any crunch. The flavour is spot on though, it tastes exactly like a Daim and if it had had the texture too, would have been my clear favourite in the bag. 

Dairy Milk Oreo 

These were the eggs that I'd been waiting to try. I wasn't sure how the Oreo would be represented in the egg - either biscuit pieces in solid chocolate filling or how it actually ended up being, a vanilla flavoured filling with biscuit pieces inside that. These ended up being my favourite, they taste like Oreos basically, vanilla cream with cocoa biscuit pieces. A tiny difference on a real Oreo as the ratios are the opposite way round, there's a lot more cream filling than biscuit but the general flavour is the same. The texture is what just pipped these over the Daim though, it doesn't say what the vanilla filling actually is but its thicker than the Creme Egg fondant but not quite as thick as the solid chocolate eggs with lots of deliciously crunchy biscuit pieces inside. 

All 4 flavours are rather sweet and with the exception of the Creme Eggs, I wouldn't say no to them again, but to be honest I probably won't buy any of the individual flavours - none are as delicious as the Lindt Eggs I had last week. 

Cadbury take note - people really will pay more for better quality, don't just knock 10p off and add a boat load of sugar in! 

6/10

Oreo - Peanut Butter & Golden flavours

I'm thinking of doing a themed week this week as I seem to have found myself surrounded by American snacks, chocolate and sweets.

I haven't had very good past experiences with chocolate from the USA so fingers crossed some of the stuff I'll be trying this week will be better! 

I've decided to kick the week off with two different flavoured Oreos. Now they're not new really, both have been available over the pond for years now I think, and they have been sold here in the UK but at extortionate prices. The people behind Oreo have decided to sell these over here now as a standard biscuit rather than an import for a while. 

The reason I've avoided any other flavoured Oreos before is I couldn't justify paying those prices when I consider the original Oreo a slight step up to the (South African apparently?) Romany Cream you get in the Mcvities biscuit barrels at Christmas and in my honest (controversial) opinion not as tasty as its English cousins the Bourbon and Custard Cream. 

Vanilla and peanut butter aren't flavours I usually look for in my biscuits but at 54p a pack in Morrisons they were a bit of a bargain! 

I don't know about anyone else but I have specific ways I like to eat certain things. Anything like an Oreo, Bourbon etc. has to be pulled apart, hopefully getting a clean break and all the cream on one biscuit and then the cream is either licked or bitten away or I use the plain biscuit as a scoop. I'm strange I know. For the sake of reviewing though, I only ate half like that and ate the other half 'properly'. 

I started with the Peanut Butter flavour, as another of my habits means I have to eat from least favourite (flavour, texture, colour) to most and if you've read my blog before you'll know I'm not too keen on peanut butter.

At first sniff, while the biscuits were still in the packet the main scent was of the cocoa biscuits and they smelt like an ordinary Oreo. Once I'd separated the halves and got to the cream though that changed. The peanut butter cream was all I could smell, as I avoid it I can't tell you wether it smells authentic but that didn't end up mattering really anyway. As per the rules I tried the cream first. My first thought was why is it gritty? Again I'm not sure if it's a supposed to be a crunchy peanut butter or if some biscuit crumbs had crept in but it was an unexpected texture. 

The flavour of the cream was very peanutty and just as expected but the issue came when I ate the biscuit as intended. The cocoa flavour overwhelmed the peanut completely, there was a mild taste of peanut butter at the very start and end of each mouthful but the majority was cocoa. 

Good for me and my 54p wasn't wasted - I'll eat the rest but not so good if you're a peanut butter lover. These would probably suit the Double Stuff Oreos better.

6/10 

Next up is as the Golden Oreo, a biscuit with vanilla filling. They smelt very sweet in the pack and unlike the former I could smell the vanilla before I'd split the halves. 

After the strength of the peanut butter, the vanilla taste was lacking in the cream. It wasn't anywhere near as strong as it smelt and in comparison seemed quite plain. 

The biscuits are sweet but the description just calls them sandwich biscuits so there's no vanilla to be found there. Eaten as a whole, again the vanilla was more of an aftertaste and it's tasty but not strong enough for my liking.  

Rating 6/10

Just as an end note, these are the two flavours Unilever have chosen to give us. 

These are the flavours the USA or the rest of the world have - Chocolate, Coconut Delight, Strawberry Milkshake, Strawberry, Green Tea, Lemon Ice, Creamsicle, Ice Cream Rainbow Sherbert, Reeses Peanut Butter, Double Delight (2 flavours), Cool Mint Creme, Banana Split, Dulche De Leche, Birthday Cake, Birthday Cake Fudge Dipped Vanilla, Gingerbread, Lemon Twist, Neapolitan, Watermelon, Limeade, Fruit Punch, Cookie Dough, Caramel Apple, Pumpkin Spice, Red Velvet, Cotton Candy, S'mores, Root Beer Float, Key Lime Pie, Marshmallow Crispie, Cookies & Creme, Fudge Covered and White Fudge Covered. 

And those are the two they gave us. 

Cadbury Marvellous Mix Ups With Oreo

So there are two new bags of these out, this one which comes with pebbles, white chocolate buttons, giant buttons and mini Oreos and another which has caramel nibbles, fudge dreams and Maynard jellies. I’ve tried both but the Maynards got eaten on the way home – no time for pictures!

                            

The Oreo pack seemed to have more in it than the Maynard pack that I got but I suppose that’s because it goes on weight and the Fudge’s are quite heavy. I’d already seen on other blog reviews but I was quite surprised at how many Oreos were in the pack, I assumed it would be filled out with the cheapest sweet or chocolate but there were more Oreos than anything else in this bag and just as many Fudges in the other.

There’s not really much I can say about each part separately I think most people have tried all the different chocolate or sweets, but they all do go well together especially in the Oreo bag. It made a nice change having a mix up of biscuit and chocolate and the white chocolate and milk. Typical then that my favorite two parts were the Oreos and the Fudge.

Oh well I’ll just have to get another couple of bags and mix them up into one giant bag :-p

Rating 7/10