Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Mmmm . . . Chocolate, Fudge, Not So Much On The Peanut Butter: Ben & Jerry’s Peanut Butter Fudge Core Ice cream!


The Good: Interesting concept, Great chocolate flavors, Wonderful ingredients
The Bad: Low nutritional value, Peanut Butter flavor does not hold its own at all!
The Basics: Ben & Jerry’s Peanut Butter Fudge Core Ice Cream is a cool concept with great individual flavors that blend poorly.


For some strange reason, I feel like it was The Daily Show With Jon Stewart that informed me of the existence of Ben & Jerry’s Core ice creams (it was that or George Takei lobbying for his own flavor Core), but it was quite some time before they actually made it to my local supermarket and I had a chance to try some. While I’ve tried three or four now, the Peanut Butter Fudge Core is my first review of one of these.

For those unfamiliar with the concept, Core flavors of ice cream are ice cream flavors that have, essentially, the “topping” of the ice cream in the pint, presented as a cylinder going through the center. So, for example, in the Caramel Sutra Core, if one looks at the top of it, there is a circle in the center of caramel (it is actually a column that goes straight down to the bottom of the pint) surrounded by ice cream. It’s a neat concept and the Peanut Butter Fudge Core has two flavors of ice cream swirled around the thick fudge column in the center of the ice cream.

And it’s pretty good, especially for those who prefer chocolate to peanut butter in such a mix.

Basics

Ben & Jerry’s ice cream comes in a pint container. The Peanut Butter Fudge Core Ice Cream is a fairly chunky ice cream with two obvious additives. The fudge core is obvious and there are mini-peanut butter cup candies mixed discretely in the chocolate ice cream half of the Peanut Butter Fudge Core pint.

At (locally) $5.99 a pint, the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream is an expensive ice cream, especially compared to other ice creams and while the Core concept is unique to Ben & Jerry’s, it is not such an incredible concept as to justify the inflated ice cream price.

Ease Of Preparation

The Peanut Butter Fudge Core 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 Peanut Butter Fudge Core Ice Cream! That said, I found it held up much better consuming each of the ice cream’s elements separate from one another, as opposed to attempting a rich flavor experience by blending the three elements on the spoon or in the mouth.

Taste

Peanut Butter Fudge Core ice cream smells surprisingly strongly of peanut butter. The aroma becomes more prevalent and clearer the warmer the ice cream goes. The Peanut Butter Fudge Core ice cream entirely foreshadows the peanut butter aspect of the flavor without even a hint of chocolate in its bouquet.

On the tongue, Ben & Jerry’s Peanut Butter Fudge Core ice cream is very much the embodiment of whichever part of the whole one tries. The peanut butter ice cream is sweet and nutty in its flavor, very much what one expects from a peanut butter ice cream. The chocolate ice cream half is a very standard chocolate ice cream, albeit not as sweet as many mass-produced chocolate ice creams. Instead, this tastes almost like a dark chocolate ice cream (which is wonderful and I tend to prefer!). The chocolate ice cream side of the Peanut Butter Fudge Core is broken up by mini-peanut butter cup candies. Unfortunately, these little candy additives are more waxy than chocolatey or peanut buttery. By contrast, the fudge core column going through the center of the two distinct ice cream flavors is dark, rich, and all that it promises for chocolate fudge flavor. In fact, it is such a perfect embodiment of chocolate fudge that I had to wonder just how Ben & Jerry’s managed to make it so malleable (it tastes like it would be very dry and hard, like pure fudge!).

Mixed together for any bite together, the chocolate and fudge completely overwhelm any flavor from the peanut butter ice cream. The chocolates are powerful and oppressive to the peanut butter and while I applaud Ben & Jerry’s for trying to make an awesome blend, the peanut butter ice cream does not hold its own against the two chocolate flavors in the Peanut Butter Fudge Core ice cream.

At best, the peanut butter flavor in the Peanut Butter Fudge Core ice cream contributes a subtle, dry aftertaste to the palate. This is not the greatest contribution the ice cream could make, but it is what the peanut butter does in this case!

Nutrition

The Ben & Jerry’s Peanut Butter Fudge Core Ice Cream is a fairly dense ice cream with noticeable additives and it is not at all healthy, though it does use decent ingredients. The pint represents four half-cup servings. In the half-cup serving, there are 300 calories, 170 of which are from fat. The nineteen grams of fat represent 29% 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 50 mg of cholesterol (that’s 17% of the RDA!) and 95 mg of Sodium (4% RDA). The only other real nutrients are six grams of protein, 10% of the RDA of Calcium and 8% of the RDA of Vitamin A and Iron in the Peanut Butter Fudge Core Ice Cream.

Ben & Jerry’s Peanut Butter Fudge Core has decent ingredients. Made primarily of Cream, Skim milk, and liquid sugar! There is nothing unpronounceable in the ingredients list. The Peanut Butter Fudge Core Ben & Jerry’s is Kosher, but not marked as gluten free. There is an allergy warning on the pint for tree nuts and wheat.

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 pint I purchased in February would have lasted until April 2016 had I not enjoyed it so much before then!).

The Peanut Butter Fudge Core ice cream is fairly light in color for the peanut butter half, but predictably dark for the chocolate and fudge elements, so it will absolutely stain fabrics. Consult a fabric guide for getting the dairy or fudge elements out of whatever you get it on. On nonporous surfaces, the ice cream wipes off exceptionally easily.

Overall

The Ben & Jerry’s Peanut Butter Fudge Core ice cream is a great concept, executed fairly, but not extraordinarily, which makes it a little tougher of a sell than it should have been.

For other Ben & Jerry’s ice creams, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Ben & Jerry's Limited Batch Candy Bar Pie ice cream
Blueberry Vanilla Graham Greek Frozen Yogurt
Coffee Caramel Buzz ice cream

5.5/10

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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