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

Cadbury Dairy Milk

Product name: Cadbury Dairy Milk
Purchase details: £1.79 for a multipack of six bars (Home Bargains)
Calories: 191 per 36g bar
Country of origin: UK

I’ve reviewed lots of Cadbury Dairy Milk products so far on my blog but, bizarrely, not the original – the nearest I’ve got is with the Freddo and Buttons but these different formats, understandably, provide different textural experiences. The majority of features of these Fairtrade bars from Mondelez were the same, though.

The scent was unchanged and the flavour and melt were as good as always.

I’m not quite sure when the shape of the six pieces changed again but the cylindrical bubbles had a nice depth to them which made the pellets a great shape for the mouth and seemed to release more of a milky taste.

As a final thought, I’ve really been liking Cadbury’s updated packaging recently. The wrappers all seem to feature different items that are made of chocolate. In this case, it was a milk urn...if only real life involved everything being made out of Dairy Milk!

Appearance: 7/10
Aroma: 8/10
Taste: 8/10
Texture: 8.5/10
Overall score: 7.78/10

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

Nestlé Kit Kat

Product name: Nestlé Kit Kat
Purchase details: £1.00 for a multipack of four four finger bars (Tesco Superstore)
Calories: 233 per 45g bar
Country of origin: UK

I ate a lot of two finger Kit Kats growing up but the four finger kind has always been a much rarer treat. I definitely prefer the depth of chocolate on the Kit Kat: Chunky, these days, but I figured I might as well review the original.

This bar contained the famous red branding and a nice image of the bar, but I did find it a bit strange that the fingers on the wrapper were completely smooth, rather than containing an imprint of the product logo – not very realistic! The packaging also followed suit with the other varieties by being made of glossy plastic rather than the paper and foil of my childhood.

Like most (if not all?) Nestlé products these days, the ‘four crispy wafer fingers covered with milk chocolate’ contained no artificial flavours, colours or preservatives. As well as this, the chocolate (66%) was part of their Cocoa Plan, and the cocoa, sugar and vanilla used in the recipe were all Fairtrade.

The rectangular bar was uniform in appearance but I did notice that the chocolate was a lot thinner on the base, where the wafer was clearly visible. What made me smile to myself, though, was the way that I’m now so familiar with the Chunky bars that I see these standard ones as a smaller version of them rather than the other way around!

Understandably, the sensory experiences on offer were largely unchanged from the Kit Kat: Chunky. The aroma was identical and the flavour was also the same, although I found it had a slightly metallic element to it. As for the texture, the wafer remained incredibly crispy but I found myself missing being able to bite off the chocolate layer on its own. However, this thinner outer lay didn’t detract from the overall chocolatey flavour, so I was very pleased about that.

You’ve got to love a classic like the Nestlé Kit Kat. Just do me a favour and make sure you eat them properly (finger by finger) – none of this, please!

Appearance: 7.5/10
Aroma: 7.5/10
Taste: 7.5/10
Texture: 8/10
Overall score: 7.63/10