Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream: Peanut butter cup

Product name: Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream: Peanut butter cup
Purchase details: £2.50 for a 500ml tub (tesco.com)

Calories: 280 per 100ml serving

Given my love of all things peanut butter, I should have rushed out to buy this Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream: Peanut butter cup when it was released, following many consumer requests. However, I wrongly assumed that it wouldn’t be that much different from the Core: Peanut butter me up that I tried about 18 months ago, so I waited for a price reduction and then kept the tub unopened in my freezer for a while. Let me tell you, I’m kicking myself now!

Made by Unilever for the UK and Ireland, this Fairtrade ‘peanut butter ice cream with peanut butter cups’ was a simpler idea to the Core variety since there was no jam. Although I’m a big fan of Reese's Peanut Butter Cup: Miniatures, my memory of the non-Reese’s cups in the Peanut butter me up was that their frozen nature made them a bit hard, which I guess is why I was hesitant to try a version that didn’t have the distraction of other flavours.

The tub featured the cheerful Ben & Jerry’s farmyard design and stated that each serving was the equivalent of two scoops or 86g. With a promising 20% of the product being the cups, the speckled ice cream turned out to be full of rugged chunks that actually made it quite hard to serve. I’m rubbish at scooping ice cream at the best of times but I had no chance of getting a neat portion here!

Despite being frozen, I was pleasantly surprised to find that this ice cream did have a slight peanutty scent. With 9% of the tub consisting of peanuts, and peanut flour also included, I was glad this did manage to come across.

Although 20% of the product was cream, I had been slightly disappointed to learn that the main ingredient was actually water. However, even when melted, the ice cream was quite thick and had a fairly creamy taste, as well as a slight graininess. The peanut flavour was by far the main aspect, though, with the emphasis being on salty rather than sweet tones.

Breaking up these salty hints was the star attraction: the peanut butter cups! I really don’t know what I was worried about because the chunky shells gave way to soft centres which were heavenly. The chocolate added a much-needed sugar hit and the abundance of peanut butter itself was more than I could have wished for.

 
I’m not going to pretend this ice cream was without faults. Personally, I would have liked the ice cream side of things to have had a tad more sweetness or creaminess (if not both!), but this was very good indeed and I did enjoy how the delicious cups were able to take centre stage.

Appearance: 7.5/10
Aroma: 6/10
Taste: 8.5/10
Texture: 8.5/10
Overall score: 7.63/10