Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream: Satisfy my bowl

Product name: Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream: Satisfy my bowl
Purchase details: £2.24 for a 500ml tub (tesco.com)
Calories: 255 per 100ml serving

I seriously don’t know how I survived for so many years without having tried the delights of Unilever’s Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream. This Fairtrade Satisfy my bowl tub was a special edition to mark the 30^th anniversary of Bob Marley’s Legend album, and also supported the 1Love Foundation which funds a youth-empowerment programme in Jamaica.

I was really interested in this ice cream since it was banana flavoured (it contained 4% banana puree) but also had cookie (6%) and caramel (9%) swirls and ‘chocolatey peace signs’ (4%). To fit in with the Caribbean theme, the usual green field of the branding was replaced with a sandy beach and a cow playing a guitar. However, the pale blue sky meant the packaging was still recognisably Ben & Jerry’s.

For this variety, a 100ml serving equated to 91g, and 23% of the product was cream itself. The ice cream was pale in colour but did have some visible caramel swirls. The chocolate chunks were presented as thick discs with raised peace signs, although the visibility of this finer detail varied.

As usual for frozen products, this didn’t emit any kind of smell, but the flavour was immense and felt like a full-on dessert. I allowed my ice cream to soften a fair amount before trying it and it was ridiculously creamy! Adding to this, the banana flavour was really strong, but then there was also a lovely, sugary taste from the caramel. I can’t say I really noticed the cookie swirls as a feature but, in contrast, the size and abundance of the chocolate made a massive difference to the experience. It tasted just liked ice cream chocolate sauce but its format meant it provided a crunchy texture amid the juicy, thick, but not completely smooth ice cream.

Whilst this tub of Satisfy my bowl wasn’t quite up there with the amazing Peanut butter cup, it did feel really special and it’s a shame it was only a limited edition.

Appearance: 7.5/10
Aroma: 5/10
Taste: 8/10
Texture: 8/10
Overall score: 7.13/10

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

Ben & Jerry's Core: All or nut-ting

Product name: Ben & Jerry’s Core: All or nut-ting
Purchase details: £3.00 for a 500ml tub (tesco.com)
Calories: 250 per 100ml serving

I’ve been dead good today and not jumped on the bandwagon of commenting on social media about the weather. However, I have used the heat as an excuse to finally open this much-anticipated tub of Ben & Jerry’s Core: All or nut-ting that’s been sat in the freezer for a few months now.

This product, made for the UK and Ireland, featured some of the same elements I loved about the Dough-ble whammy version: it had a clever name, was Fairtrade, and consisted of two ice cream flavours (chocolate and hazelnut) and a separate core (chocolatey hazelnut!). The tub also had the same cool (no pun intended) design that showed the make-up of these sections within the pot.

As previously, a 100ml serving was described as being the equivalent of two scoops, but I hadn’t realised before that this also translated as 85g. I’m not sure if this was a change on the packaging or whether I just completely missed it on the Dough-ble whammy. Anyway, I found this a lot more helpful in terms of my diet plan, and it meant it didn’t matter that I practically chiselled the ice cream out of the tub at points when I was unable to get ‘clean’ scoops.

The difference between each section’s colours wasn’t quite as defined in this variety but they did remain distinct. I loved the jaggedness of the ‘chocolatey chunks’ (3%) too.

As a frozen product, the scent was minimal, but ever-so-slightly nutty. The ice cream itself contained 25% cream so, as you can imagine, it tasted wonderful. The hazelnut side was like a liquid version of the inside of a Kinder Bueno, whilst the chocolate had the exact same rich flavour that was on offer with the Dough-ble whammy.

The core’s (12%) texture remained as fantastic and fudgy as it had been previously. However, it had an additional and incredibly strong hazelnut taste (4% of the whole product was hazelnut paste). It was like a thick, sticky and bitter version of Nutella and it was delicious.

All the elements combined were, unsurprisingly, fantastic. The mix of chocolate and hazelnut was great and the chocolate chunks added extra interest and a further chocolatey kick.

Whether eaten melted or a bit more solid, this was another wonderful product from Ben & Jerry’s. Having loved the Dough-ble whammy so much, though, I must confess that I missed the clumps of cookie dough! 

Appearance: 7.5/10
Aroma: 5.5/10
Taste: 8.5/10
Texture: 8.5/10
Overall score: 7.5/10

Ben & Jerry's Core: Dough-ble whammy

Product name: Ben & Jerry’s Core: Dough-ble whammy
Purchase details: £2.49 for a 500ml tub (tesco.com)
Calories: 230 per 100ml serving 

You might need to be sitting down for this confession...I’ve only ever eaten Ben & Jerry’s ice cream twice. I know, I know – it’s terrible. We just never had it in the house when I was growing up and, now I’m old enough to make my own decisions about what to buy, I rarely think of getting my own ice cream! The two varieties I have tried (Phish Food and Core: Peanut butter me up), though, have been pretty darn good.

I’ve heard a lot, over the years, about how amazing the Cookie Dough variety is but I’ve just never got around to trying it. However, when a friend raved about this even more exciting Dough-ble whammy flavour earlier in the year, I decided I just had to try it. Fair enough, it’s now a few months later, but I’ve been waiting for it to be on offer – I snapped it up as soon as it was half price!

The Core range of ice cream is relatively new and, I think, is fantastic. The concept involves each tub being split into two different ice cream flavours with some form of pillar of sauce running down the centre. In this case, the ice cream flavours were chocolate and cookie dough and the core (that contributed to 12% of the tub) was chocolate fudge sauce. Excitingly there were even chunks of chocolate chip cookie dough within the ice cream (making up 7% of the product), and I have to say, I loved the clever name!

Despite it being a freezing cold November day, I was really excited to try this Fairtrade ice cream for the first time. I’m used to seeing Ben & Jerry’s tubs containing background images of a farm scene and, whilst this was present on the back of my tub, I was far more interested in the scrummy-looking images of the ice cream that waited inside, and I loved how this was done in a way that clearly showed the layout of the tub rather than being a ‘serving suggestion’ of the product in a bowl.

The back of the tub warned that the ‘chocolatey concoction’ wasn’t ‘for the faint-hearted’ so I decided to stick to the recommended 100ml serving size which is about the equivalent of two scoops. The packaging didn’t state where the ice cream had been produced, but there was a fantastic description of the journey each mouthful took you on, involving diving ‘into the core of soft chocolate fudge’ and riding ‘the rapids of rich chocolate ice cream’ whilst avoiding the ‘cookie dough rocks as you reach the canyon of creamy vanilla ice cream’.

On prising off the lid, I thought the ice cream looked great, with the border between the two halves being curved just enough to look a bit like the yin and yang symbol. There were visible chunks of chocolate and, on delving a bit deeper, the cookie dough looked deliciously like light brown sugar. As for the core, this looked far more like chocolate fudge sauce then I’d expected, and was a darker shade of brown to the chocolate ice cream which made it easy to see what you were getting on each spoonful.

As this was a frozen product, there was hardly any smell at all, but there was a very slight hint of chocolate. The chocolate ice cream that this seemed to come from had a strong cocoa taste and was also extremely creamy (unsurprising when considering 24% of the product was cream!). I love vanilla and loved how fantastically strong this flavour was in the cookie dough side of the ice cream – it wasn’t boring at all. Both of the ice cream varieties had a lovely, silky melt which was interspersed with the chunky chocolate pieces that reminded me slightly of the end of a Cornetto cone, although more chocolatey.

The core was, quite simply, incredible. It really did taste like it had been lifted from a chocolate fudge cake – it had such a strong chocolate flavour that almost hinted at alcohol. On the spoon, it was very stiff and gooey, and remained nice and thick in the mouth before practically trickling down the throat. Overall, it was a great additional texture that you would never normally experience with ice cream.

As for the cookie dough pieces, I was delighted that that these had remained soft, despite being frozen. It had a part-smooth, part-grainy texture and, thankfully, did taste like cookie dough – amazing. It was sugary and, as a result, lifted the flavour from the intense chocolate hit provided by the core and half of the ice cream.

I ate my ice cream after it had been out of the freezer for 5–10 minutes and found that this allowed it to maintain its frozenness whilst being very soft and smooth. The flavours were nothing short of great together so I had no option but to lick the bowl when I had finished!

I think I need to buy Ben & Jerry’s more often! 

Appearance: 8/10
Aroma: 5.5/10
Taste: 9/10
Texture: 9/10
Overall score: 7.88/10