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Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Review: Ben and Jerry's "Half Baked"


You know what sucks? Getting swamped in school work and planning and having to put blog reviews on the back burner for a week. You know what's awesome? One of the local grocery stores having Ben and Jerry's ice cream on sale for half price. With the financial burden of purchasing this brand lightened somewhat, I can finally get down to trying some new flavours – rejoice!
The first one I decided to sample was Ben and Jerry's Half Baked, a combination of vanilla and chocolate ice creams with cookie dough and brownie pieces mixed in. I was pretty optimistic about this one heading in, so I have to say that I'm a bit disappointed overall. The price of having high standards, I guess?
First things first, I really loved about 80% of this product. Both the chocolate and vanilla ice creams were of Ben and Jerry's usual excellent quality (the conclusion I've come to is that the vanilla we experienced in If I Had 1,000,000 Flavours was, indeed, a fluke), and I particularly enjoyed the flavour of the vanilla. The brownie pieces were very fudgey and had the nice texture of the slightly underdone brownie that is soft and gooey and oozes chocolate.
However, the other 20% of the ice cream was the cookie dough, and I found it to be a bit of a let down. Now, we tried their cookie dough flavour ice cream before and the cookie dough in that product, though it did freeze more solidly than we would have liked, was quite good. The cookie dough in this carton of Half Baked was not just hard, it was dry and crumbly, and overall just not very nice. I found myself trying to avoid the cookie dough and, when it did end up on my spoon, chew through it as fast as possible just to get it over with. Which doesn't make a lot of sense to me, since they should be using the same stuff for both flavours, no? If this is another “fluke” inconsistency, then Ben and Jerry's seriously need to look at some quality control!

Recommend to a friend? The non-cookie dough parts of this were great, and if the texture of the dough was improved I would recommend this. As it is, I'm not sure I could justify telling someone to pay full price for this.

Repurchase? As per the comments above, if the dough was better, yes. Otherwise, no.

8 comments:

  1. odd, I wonder if the dough can get stale? Maybe prior to mixing it in with the ice cream.

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  2. I've found that some containers of this flavor WILL have stale tasting cookie dough or the brownie chunks. You just never know if you're gonna get a good one or not. When you DO get a good container, it tastes amazing with both the cookie dough and the brownies being nice and soft and gooey.

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    1. Omg I too have been having issues with this as well. I just finished another half baked wishing I was going to get the fresh one and not the stale crumbly brownies. I'm so tired of spending the money hoping I would get the chewy soft cookie dough with soft gooey brownies.

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  3. What no more reviews?

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    1. Should be back shortly - had some computer malfunctions (see most recent post)

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  4. Any real ice cream connaisseur, especially one that has a web site dedicated to ice cream treats, would know Ben and Jerry's is best when left out at least 5-7 minutes. This is common Ben and Jerry's pint knowledge. Shame on you!!!

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  5. This is one of my favorite flavors which I have been purchasing since 2005. I only buy about 1 pint every month or so but my last to were awful to even eat. One the ice cream was icy and in the other the brownies were stale and hard. The cookie dough should be soft. I emailed ben and jerry's and they are sending me a coupon for a replacement pint. Your should try this flavor again, it really is excellent.

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