The Good: Tastes good, Not terrible on the nutrition front, Fair trade certified
The Bad: The coffee flavor is entirely sublimated to the caramel and toffee in it, More expensive than other ice creams.
The Basics: Ben & Jerry’s Coffee Caramel Buzz Ice Cream is a good ice cream that is better for fans of ice cream than those who truly love coffee.
As spring springs, I’m back in an ice cream reviewing mood! First up is Ben & Jerry’s Coffee Caramel Buzz ice cream. I’m a fan of Ben & Jerry’s ice creams, but the short evaluation of the Ben & Jerry’s Coffee Caramel Buzz ice cream is that the ice cream is very much underwhelming to coffee fans (like me). The coffee ice cream is blended with caramel swirls and the (very) occasional English toffee bit. The coffee flavor cannot hold its own against the additives swirled into it and ends up being much sweeter than anything truly coffee.
Basics
Ben & Jerry’s ice cream comes in a pint container. The Coffee Caramel Buzz Ice Cream is a mostly smooth ice cream with a swirl of caramel in it. The swirl was fairly minimal, in most of my pint, it was actually near the bottom of the container, with the toffee bits settled down there as well.
At (locally) $5.99 a pint, the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream is an expensive ice cream, especially compared to other coffee ice creams. This is made of decent ingredients, which does set it apart from many other coffee ice creams.
Ease Of Preparation
The Coffee Caramel Buzz Ice Cream is a lightly loaded ice cream. As an ice cream, preparation is ridiculously simple: one need only open the top of the container, scoop out a half cup and consume! There is no trick to preparing or eating the Coffee Caramel Buzz Ice Cream!
Taste
Coffee Caramel Buzz ice cream smells very much like a light latte. The coffee smell is strong enough to be recognizable, but has a diluted quality to it. There is a slight caramel scent as well, though it is subtle and much more like an afterscent than a primary aroma. The coffee scent gets stronger as the ice cream gets warmer (or, at least, less frozen).
On the tongue, Ben & Jerry’s Coffee Caramel Buzz ice cream tastes like coffee, though a distinctly sweeter version than most coffee. Having made homemade coffee ice cream, the flavor of this is like a frozen latte as opposed to a strong, dark coffee. Blended into the sweet, slightly dry coffee flavor are sweet swirls of caramel. The caramel is very sweet, further dilutes the coffee flavor and overwhelms the ice cream. There are tiny bits of buttery toffee mixed into the ice cream. In addition to the flavor which compliments the caramel, the toffee pieces dilute the flavor of the sweet coffee ice cream.
This ice cream leaves an exceptionally sweet aftertaste in the mouth. The creamy flavor of the Coffee Caramel Buzz ice cream turns into a dry aftertaste that lingers in the mouth for about three minutes after the last bite is consumed.
Nutrition
The Ben & Jerry’s Coffee Caramel Buzz Ice Cream is a fairly light ice cream with a medium light additive (caramel swirl is very light in the ice cream and is not present in all of the bites or even most of them). The pint represents four half-cup servings. In the half-cup serving, there are 290 calories, 140 of which are from fat. The sixteen grams of fat represent 25% of the RDA of fat, with 50% of one’s RDA of saturated fat coming in the 10 grams of saturated fat in this ice cream. One serving has 70 mg of cholesterol (that’s 23% of the RDA!) and 120 mg of Sodium (5% RDA). The only other real nutrients are four grams of protein and 10% of the RDA of Calcium and 10% of the RDA of Vitamin A in the Coffee Caramel Buzz Ice Cream.
Ben & Jerry’s has decent ingredients. Made primarily of Cream, Skim milk, and liquid sugar! There is nothing unpronounceable in the ingredients list. The Coffee Caramel Buzz Ben & Jerry’s is Kosher, but not marked as gluten free. There is an allergy warning for fish, peanuts and tree nuts and it is fair trade certified.
Storage/Clean-Up
Ben & Jerry’s ice cream is both a frozen and a dairy product, so it is pretty obvious that it must be kept frozen in order to remain viable. Kept frozen it remains fresh for months.
The Coffee Caramel Buzz ice cream is fairly light and it would be surprising if it left stains outside of light fabrics. As well, when the ice cream melts and gets onto fabrics, it will require one to wash it right out. On nonporous surfaces, the ice cream wipes off exceptionally easily.
Overall
The Ben & Jerry’s Coffee Caramel Buzz ice cream is good, but given that there are other premium coffee-flavored ice creams on the market now, it’s a much tougher sell than it might have once been. It’s not bad, but coffee lovers will find it underwhelming.
For other Ben & Jerry’s ice creams, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Limited Edition Pumpkin Cheesecake
Limited Batch Pina Colada
Limited Edition Cotton Candy
New York Super Fudge Chunk
Cheesecake Brownie
Willie Nelson's Country Peach Cobbler
4/10
For other food reviews, please visit my Food Review Index Page for an organized listing!
© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |
No comments:
Post a Comment