Cold Stone Assortment Jelly Belly Jelly Beans - 10 lbs bulk
Click to buy directly from Jelly Belly!
Click to buy directly from Jelly Belly!
The Good: Great realistic flavors, Environmentally responsible bulk, Taste does not fade
The Bad: No real nutritional value
The Basics: Jelly Belly has a perfect collection of ice cream sundae-flavored jelly beans with the Cold Stone Ice Cream Parlor mix; five amazing Jelly Bellys!
You know it's love when your wife both knows what you like and buys you things with some thought in their mind that they will be helping you find new things to review. Last year, I was in a funk and not feeling well and my wife returned home armed with candy. Her arms were especially full because she brought me in a new bulk pack of Jelly Belly jelly beans. In this case, she had picked up a ten-pound case of Cold Stone Creamery Ice Cream Parlor Mix Jelly Bellys. Jelly Belly created five flavors designed to taste like ice cream from the Cold Stone Creamery - an ice cream franchise that I am now looking into because of how good these beans are.
The five flavors found in the Ice Cream Parlor Mix - Chocolate Devotion, Our Strawberry Blonde, Birthday Cake Remix, Mint Mint Chocolate Chocolate Chip (no, that's not a typo!), and Apple Pie A La Cold Stone - are only found together in the mix. There is no way, for example, to get Chocolate Devotion beans separate, but given how amazing these beans taste, it is hard to want them separate. This is, truly, a perfect mix of flavors and the flavors taste like the ice cream combinations they claim to, offering a truly rich variety for jelly bean fans.
For those who might never have had Jelly Belly jelly beans, these are easily the best jelly beans on the planet, packing a lot of flavor into a very small size. Unlike most jelly beans which are only vaguely flavored and are more based on colors, Jelly Belly jelly beans have a wide variety of actual flavors, like cappuccino, jalapeno, Grape Crush, or their signature flavor Buttered Popcorn.
Who needs ten pounds of Cold Stone Ice Cream Parlor flavored Jelly Bellys? I suspect anyone who would gorge on ice cream at Cold Stone Creamery cafes might want these. Anyone who might like Ice Cream Parlor flavors of Jelly Belly jelly beans will likely find that this is the best way to get them in bulk in an environmentally responsible way for the least amount of money.
Basics
The Cold Stone Creamery Ice Cream Parlor Mix is a collection of five unique flavors of Jelly Belly jelly beans. Jelly Belly jelly beans are approximately one half inch long by one quarter inch wide and they are roughly bean-shaped. These little candies are marketed to taste precisely like different Cold Stone Creamery ice cream or ice cream sundae combinations and they live up to what they claim to very well, at least in principle. As a lover of ice cream, it is almost shocking I have never been to a Cold Stone Creamery ice cream parlor, but I have both made ice cream and the combinations for sundaes these beans represent are not overly strange (at least to me!).
The Ice Cream Parlor mix Jelly Bellys are available in a few quantities, but the largest quantity available is the ten pound bulk case. This is a decent-sized box with a plastic lining and while some might wonder why anyone would need a ten pound box, I ask, "Ever blown several paychecks by eating out only at ice cream parlors? It's not cute!" I suspect that for most people, a ten pound case is a year's supply of these jelly beans.
The beans within the Ice Cream Parlor mix vary in their ease of recognition, though none of them look precisely like any other flavor, save the Apple Pie A La Cold Stone. That flavor, like Toasted Marshmallow, is a white bean with brown flecks in it and the two are cosmetically identical when side by side, though I've noticed the Apple Pie A La Cold Stone has a more tan tinge to the white, which makes it possible to differentiate from the Toasted Marshmallow beans (if one has for some reason mixed these in with other Jelly Bellys). Our Strawberry Blonde, similarly, is distinguished from Strawberry Daiquiri Jelly Bellys by having a darker pink base with red splotches. The Chocolate Devotion beans look like Cappuccino or Dr. Pepper beans, save that the purple-brown base has dark brown spots throughout them. Birthday Cake Remix is essentially an albino version of Tutti-Fruitti by its coloring. It is a white jelly bean with multicolored spots. Finally, the Mint Mint Chocolate Chocolate Chip Jelly Belly jelly beans are easy to distinguish from the other Jelly Bellys by the fact that they are a mint green with brown spots. The only bean that even looks remotely like it are the Juicy Pear beans!
Ease of Preparation
These are jelly beans, not living a thrifty lifestyle while across from an ice cream parlor! In the case of the ten pound box, one might want to put them in a candy dish of some form as opposed to always going into the box. Then again, you could empty the box out and store these in ice cream cones or ice cream cone-shaped pottery! We live in the land where jelly beans are made to taste like ice cream sundaes, truly there is nothing we cannot do! Eat them out of the box or with a spoon if it so pleases you!
Taste
Believe it or not, the Ice Cream Parlor Mix is the first time I have reviewed a multipack of different flavors of Jelly Belly jelly beans! To keep it simple, it makes sense to describe each bean on its own within the assortment, I think.
The first bean I was instantly drawn to was the Mint Mint Chocolate Chocolate Chip. I have a fondness for all things chocolate mint - I make my own chocolate mint ice cream! - and mint chocolate chip has always been one of my favorite flavors of ice cream. The Mint Mint Chocolate Chocolate Chip flavor is intended to embody the taste of mint chocolate chip ice cream with fudge and brownie and this made for an awesome start to the taste experience as it truly embodies all of those flavors. This flavor has a minimal bouquet, but it does smell faintly minty. When placed on the tongue, it has a muted peppermint/spearmint flavor that is cut instantly from the pure sharpness of mint by the taste of chocolate. The chocolate flavor within this bean is easily recognized as a fudge flavor, so it lives up perfectly to the flavors it claims to be. Bean after bean, this is one of the best flavors Jelly Belly has ever created!
My wife, big chocolate fan that she is, convinced me to try the Chocolate Devotion beans next. A handful of these little brown beans - I separated them out for the taste testing purposes - smells richly of cocoa, a smell that is tough to get until one separates these beans from the other. The full-bodied aroma of warm chocolate makes this bean an easy sell for living up to its claim of tasting like chocolate ice cream, chocolate chips, fudge and brownie. Like the Mint Mint Chocolate Chocolate Chip, there is no recognizable differentiation in taste between "brownie" and "fudge," but the intent here is clear and well-realized with offering different chocolate flavors. The tongue hits the jelly bean and there is a smoother chocolate flavor, like that of ice cream. Breaking the bean reveals a more potent chocolate flavor release, which fans will interpret as the perfect fudge, so when one chews the Chocolate Devotion it is truly like tasting chocolate ice cream, over brownie bits with chocolate sauce on it! This is absolutely amazing and it is a clearly different flavor from something like the standard Jelly Belly flavor Chocolate Pudding.
Our Strawberry Blonde intrigued me as it claims - according to the Jelly Belly website - to possess the flavors of strawberry ice cream, graham cracker pie crust, strawberries, caramel and whipped topping. I was fairly certain that Jelly Belly could not pull this off, despite them making an awesome Strawberry Jam jelly bean, they underwhelmed me with their Strawberry Cheesecake beans. The sheer number of flavors they are trying to pack into this bean seemed to make it a herculean task for the taste buds. The strawberry ice cream and strawberries flavors easily dominate these jelly beans which have no noticeable scent to them. What impressed me, though, was how close they come to fulfilling their full claimed potential. These are a rich, milky strawberry taste when one begins eating them and as the fruity tang clears, it is replaced on the tongue with a sweetness that has the body of caramel to it. I thought that this would be the bean which would rob the assortment of perfection until about two seconds after I had swallowed the beans; my tongue was dry and bore the aftertaste of honey graham cracker crust! This, too, is an impressive Jelly Belly and that it fails to taste like whipped topping is not enough for me to downgrade it or the assortment. Anyone who likes strawberry sundaes will love this flavor.
The Birthday Cake Remix is a remarkably straightforward jelly bean that smells like vanilla icing when the beans are segregated. Designed to taste like cake-flavored ice cream (apparently Cold Stone Creamery's type is called "Cake Batter" ice cream), sprinkles, brownie and fudge, this bean is incredible in that there are the distinctly different - but similarly sugary - tastes of icing and sprinkles! The flavor of yellow cake is in each bean and it ends with a subtle richness that is fudgy, but it is captured more in the aftertaste than the primary flavoring. Still, this bean, too, lives up to what it claims to be.
Finally, the Apple Pie A La Cold Stone has no smell to reveal that this is supposed to be flavored like french vanilla ice cream, cinnamon, graham cracker pie crust, apple pie filling and caramel. Ironically, the least prevalent flavor in these beans is the vanilla ice cream flavor. Every bite of these beans is a recognizable mix of cinnamon, graham cracker, apple pie flavor (the mix of apple and cinnamon that is distinct erupts into the nose when these beans are being chewed!), and caramel. The proportions of these change with each and every bean, but the beans are packed with the flavors they are supposed to contain, which finishes this assortment off with another genuine winner!
Nutrition
Again, these are jelly beans, so anyone looking to them for nutrition needs to understand they are based upon something that is not exactly rich in nutrients. Jelly beans, even Jelly Belly jelly beans, are not a legitimate source of nutrition. These are a snack food, a dessert, and are in no way an adequate substitute for a real meal. A serving is listed at thirty-five beans, with each Jelly Belly jelly bean having approximately four calories. This means that in a single serving, there are 140 calories, which is 12% of your daily recommended intake.
The thing is, Jelly Belly jelly beans are not as bad as they could be in the nutrition area. They have no fat and no protein, but for those who have ever dated a Vegan, these are Vegan compliant because they contain no gelatin! They have only one percent of the daily sodium with 15 mg and they are gluten free! The main ingredients are sugar, corn syrup and modified food starch, so it's not like this is an all-natural food, but they could be far, far worse.
Storage/Clean-up
Jelly Belly jelly beans have a shelf life of approximately one year and I have yet to run across a stale Jelly Belly (though that could have something to do with a package never surviving a year around me and this flavor is not even going to last six months . . . or maybe even one month!). They remain freshest when they are kept in an airtight container (the bag in the bulk box is sufficient if it is kept closed) and they ought to be kept in a lukewarm environment. Storing them in hot places is likely to make the beans stick together and be gross. Kept in a cool, dry place, the beans retain their flavor perfectly.
As for cleanup, unless one allows the Jelly Belly to get hot to the point that the waxy coating on the bean melts, the dyes on these do not bleed or denature, so there is usually no cleanup necessary, not even washing one's hands after eating them (always wash your hands before eating Jelly Bellys, these don't come from a nice protected bottle, after all!). I've never had any of the Ice Cream Parlor Mix Jelly Bellys stain anything.
Overall
A perfect blend of jelly beans that contain a creamy essence common to ice cream sundaes, the five flavors in this mix are truly incredible and will keep one's taste buds excited. Go ahead, stock up! The Ice Cream Parlor Mix is well worth it!
For other Jelly Belly flavors, please check out my reviews of:
Grape Jelly
Peanut Butter
Buttered Popcorn
10/10
For other food and drink reviews in a very organized listing, please click here to visit my index page!
© 2010, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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