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.

Review - DQ Blizzard of the Month: Ooey Gooey Caramel Brownie

With September well underway and us having yet to review the Dairy Queen Blizzard of the Month, when B took a left leaving the university this afternoon I knew what was on the radar.  I ordered first, and as I stumbled with my request; "I'd like an Ooey Gooey Caramel Brownie Blizzard please, the little regular size one, I mean, a small one, that's the one I consider regular," B gave my ordering technique a grade of FAIL.  Sure enough, our regular table was unoccupied, and soon we were looking into two cups of "gooey Caramel, real fudge brownie pieces and choco chunks blended with creamy vanilla soft serve."  Let me break it down for you.

Awful iPod picture quality ahoy!

Dairy Queen's "creamy soft serve" (which I believe is probably a combination of iced milk and edible oil product), served as a vector for what on first inspection seemed to be only chocolate shards and brownie chunks.  I consulted the class list for the Blizzard of the Month again, and noted that perhaps someone was skipping.  Visibly, the caramel was not in attendance.  As I crunched into my first spoonful however, I was pleased to enjoy the texture of the breaking chocolate shards as well as the caramel-infused vanilla soft serve.  No one was skipping after all - the caramel was simply hiding amongst his peers.

I would be lying if I didn't mention that this was actually our second offense with this particular Blizzard, having sampled it earlier in the month before deciding to create our ice cream blog.  The first time, we recall being rather disappointed with the lack of caramel.  Today we were happy to discover satisfactory caramel levels.  Optimum caramel levels might be achieved through less blending of the Blizzard, but we understand that this would result in the creation of other flaws.  The brownie pieces were flavourful, chewy, and fudge-like, sometimes surrounded by a pocket of caramel.  I have the feeling that this constitutes the Ooey Gooey referred to in the Blizzard's name.  The chocolate shards, although they were probably on the synthetic end of the chocolate spectrum, were very satisfying in texture and taste: they gave the Blizzard a delightful crunch to compliment the sugary rich brownie pieces.  Perhaps a little sweet for some palates, Dairy Queen's Ooey Gooey Caramel Brownie delivers just what it offers.  We drove home in a sugary haze.

Recomend to a Friend? Aaaw Yeeah

Repurchase: J + B - already did