This has been a rather chocolaty winter and early spring for Blue Bell, what with the release of flavors like I ♥ Chocolate and Dutch Chocolate. This month, another chocolate flavor is added to the parade, Nutty Chocolate. Blue Bell describes this flavor as a rich chocolate ice cream loaded with milk chocolate coated pecans, dark chocolate coated peanuts, white chocolate coated almonds and roasted walnuts. So we're promised lots of different kinds of nut, most coated with chocolate candy, and immersed in a rich chocolate base ice cream? Oh yes, I am definitely inclined to want some!
Of course, promising is one thing, delivering is another. Fortunately, Blue Bell delivers on the description: If you love chocolate ice cream loaded with nuts, this flavor is for you. Nutty chocolate it succeeds in terms of both quality and quantity. Quality-wise, the base ice cream tastes pretty good. This is Blue Bell's basic chocolate, almost a milk-chocolate, and while it does not reach the taste heights of their excellent vanilla, it serves as a fine foundation for the mix-ins, which are the stars of this show. The pecans, peanuts, and almonds are all outstanding. These nuts taste very fresh, they crunch in your mouth rather than having a mushy consistency, and the use of different types of nuts creates a nice variety of taste for the palate. This taste diversity is further enhanced by the three kinds of chocolate candy coatings. You can really taste the differences among the milk, dark, and white chocolate that coats these respective nuts, and the roasted walnuts add nicely to the flavor sensation.
Quantity-wise, there is no skimping! This ice cream is, start to finish and top to bottom, stuffed chock-full of the various nuts! Peeling off the lid, you see some nuts. Digging in with the spoon reveals even more nuts. The nut-barrage puts this flavor over the top and then some. I found it virtually impossible to carve out a spoonful that contained no nuts, and just about every spoonful had multiple nuts. I suspect that if the chocolate base was judged alone, it would merit a C+ maybe at best a B-, it's OK but nothing special. But the overwhelming quantity and high quality of the nut mix-ins take Nutty Chocolate to the highest level.
Where Steve Found It: Walmart
Steve's Grade: A