The Good: Good flavor, Reasonably priced
The Bad: Chocolate flavor is almost entirely absent from the ice cream, Not one of the more nutritious flavors
The Basics: Ben & Jerry’s Candy Bar Pie Ice Cream is a limited edition flavor that grew on me with each bite . . . unfortunately, with its fat content, I can’t eat much, lest it literally cause me to grow with each bite!
When I first sat down to review the Ben & Jerry’s Candy Bar Pie ice cream that I picked up at the grocery store, I was ready with the snarky title “Perhaps ‘Limited Batch’ Is Ben & Jerry’s Euphemism For Weak Flavor: Candy Bar Pie.” But then I kept eating it and writing and eating and writing and I discovered that I had leapt, very much, to the wrong initial conclusion. The thing is, my local grocery store recently had an amazing sale on Ben & Jerry’s ice creams and it coincided with my getting my tax refund, so I bought a bunch of flavors. When I got ready to eat them, I looked over the Candy Bar Pie and I honestly had no idea what attracted me to it. Outside the words “Limited Batch,” I was stymied; did I really spend some of my fun money on a flavor my wife would prefer over me (my wife loves peanut butter)? Did I just buy a flavor based on its limited edition nature without actually seeing what was in it?! Regardless, when I got around to trying it, I was instantly underwhelmed.
But then, as I reviewed it and had my pint of it out, it started to smell better and better and the flavor (save the chocolate in it) began to really pop. And I found myself writing positive adjectives and smiling and enjoying myself, so I had to go back and scrap the beginning of the review!
So, right off the bat, Ben & Jerry’s Candy Bar Pie is an ice cream flavor that should be eaten closer to its melting point than when it is solidly frozen. That’s important for those who want to get the most real flavor out of it.
Basics
Ben & Jerry’s ice cream comes in a pint container. The Candy Bar Pie Ice Cream is a fairly chunky ice cream with two obvious additives. The fudge flakes/chocolate nougat were minimal, but the pretzel swirl was present in virtually every bite.
At (locally) $5.99 a pint, the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream is an expensive ice cream, especially compared to other ice creams, but things like the Limited Batch Candy Bar Pie tend to make up for that in creativity; the bigger brands are not making such creative flavors with such (supposedly) distinctive flavors. This is made of decent ingredients, which does set it apart from many other ice creams.
Ease Of Preparation
The Candy Bar Pie Ice Cream is a loaded ice cream. As an ice cream, preparation is ridiculously simple: one need only to open the top of the container, scoop out a half cup and consume! There is no trick to preparing or eating the Candy Bar Pie Ice Cream!
Taste
Candy Bar Pie ice cream smells recognizably of peanut butter. The aroma becomes more prevalent and clearer the warmer the ice cream goes. Removing the Candy Bar Pie pint from my subzero freezer and opening it right away yielded a scentless experience (which was fine because I could not possibly scoop the ice cream out when it is so hard anyway!). But, as it approached its freezing point, this ice cream became more and more aromatic and the scent of peanut butter became stronger and (strangely) more inviting.
In the mouth, Ben & Jerry’s Candy Bar Pie ice cream tastes like peanut butter in every single bite! The flavor is distinct, clear and (ironically, because the other ice cream in my freezer right now is Breyer’s Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup ice cream) might be the most accurate recreation of a sweet peanut butter flavor exactly like the center of a Reese’s peanut butter cup that I have ever tried in ice cream form! Blended in fairly regularly with the peanut butter ice cream in the Candy Bar Pie is a swirl of sweet and salty pretzels. This is essentially a caramel swirl (albeit thicker) in which pretzels have been powderized and ground up. It comes out tasting like caramel and pretzels and peanut butter. The chocolate in the Candy Bar Pie never quite pops. Whenever I encountered a piece of fudge or chocolate nougat, it manifested on the taste buds more as a texture (hard) than a flavor (chocolatey). The closest it came to popping as a flavor was contributing a waxy chocolate undertone to the sweetness of the pretzel swirl/peanut butter.
Interestingly, the Candy Bar Pie does not have a strongly dry aftertaste. This is surprising because the peanut butter and pretzel swirls in the ice cream are fairly dry in their primary flavors, so one might expect that dryness to persist after the last bite is consumed. It does not!
Nutrition
The Ben & Jerry’s Candy Bar Pie Ice Cream is a fairly dense ice cream with noticeable additives (thought I could not honestly find any difference between the advertized fudge flakes and chocolate nougat). The pint represents four half-cup servings. In the half-cup serving, there are 300 calories, 160 of which are from fat. The eighteen grams of fat represent 28% of the RDA of fat, with 40% of one’s RDA of saturated fat coming in the 8 grams of saturated fat in this ice cream. One serving has 55 mg of cholesterol (that’s 18% of the RDA!) and 210 mg of Sodium (9% RDA). The only other real nutrients are five grams of protein, 10% of the RDA of Calcium and 8% of the RDA of Vitamin A in the Candy Bar Pie Ice Cream.
Ben & Jerry’s Candy Bar Pie has decent ingredients. Made primarily of Cream, Skim milk, and liquid sugar! There is nothing unpronounceable in the ingredients list. The Candy Bar Pie Ben & Jerry’s is Kosher, but not marked as gluten free (which makes sense because the pretzels have flour in them). There is no allergy warning on the pint, though it obviously has nuts in it and those with a peanut allergy need to be aware.
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 Candy Bar Pie ice cream is fairly light in color 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 Candy Bar Pie ice cream is a surprisingly flavorful ice cream that is, truly, quite different from others on the market. While it might not have enough chocolate in it to balance the sweet and salty nutty/pretzel flavor out for my tastes, it remains one of the pleasant surprises of the Limited Edition line and one worth trying while it is on the market!
For other Ben & Jerry’s ice creams, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Blueberry Vanilla Graham Greek Frozen Yogurt
Coffee Caramel Buzz ice cream
Raspberry Fudge Chunk Greek Frozen Yogurt
7/10
For other food reviews, please visit my Food Review Index Page for an organized listing!
© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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