While browsing a local Wal-Mart earlier this week, one of our readers sent us a Freezer Find featuring two new flavors from Ben & Jerry’s. The first, Pina Colada, had been an expected release from the months of May until August, but the second had come as a surprise. Joining other Wal-Mart exclusive flavors like Banana Cream Pie and Blueberry Cheesecake, this latest limited-batch collaboration had put a slight twist on one of their most successful creations. Ben & Jerry’s has essentially taken their 9th best selling flavor of all time and added a bit of chocolate to the base in order to create Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup: a chocolate peanut butter ice cream with peanut butter cups.
This chocolate reincarnation features a slightly slimmer nutrition profile at only 330 calories per serving compared to the 350 contained in the original. If you’ve experienced Ben & Jerry’s Peanut Butter Cup, you’re well aware of the snail’s pace this pint forces you to take. The frequency of the oversized peanut butter cups coupled with the consistency of super-premium ice cream means you’ll want to savor each bite you struggle to excavate. I scrape a shallow layer of the chocolate peanut butter ice cream out from around the candy and sample the new base Ben & Jerry’s has created. The ice cream is dense, rich and has a slow-melting consistency that takes a while before it breaks down. As the base begins to melt, the peanut butter portion is able to tone down the typical dry finish of Ben & Jerry’s chocolate base, but stops short of overpowering its companion. The two complimentary flavors are able to coexist without complaint and provide a near-equal contribution.
In the same fashion as before, Vermont’s Finest have added more peanut butter cups in this pint than you can count on your hands. They avoid the quality versus quantity dilemma by giving you a ton of top-notch candy to accompany their chocolate peanut butter base. Although these are among their hardest mix-ins, it’s hard to complain when nearly every spoonful finishes with half of a peanut butter cup left behind. Only extending the wait time required to fully enjoy this flavor, these cups outlast the super-premium ice cream to add even more chocolate, peanut butter and richness. Considering Ben & Jerry’s only slightly tweaked the formula, it should come as no surprise that the result is equally as impressive.
Where I Found It: Super Walmart
Grade: A
