What are the Best Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream Flavors? - A (somewhat) comprehensive rating system

A few years ago, one of my co-workers told me how he and a group of friends got together every year and went on a Pizza Tasting Tour of a fun city.  A lot of times it was in New York, sometimes in Chicago or Philly.  But they would go to 5 or 6 pizza places over the course of a long weekend and try a pie and a pitcher of beer at each to find their favorite slices.  I LOVE this idea!  And I love pizza too, so maybe someday I will steal it verbatim.

But in the meantime, I mentioned to Matt that I would love to do this for something that we both love a lot, like an Ice Cream Tour!  He pressed me for the logistics of it, and I said maybe we could fly out to Vermont to Ben & Jerry's headquarters where they do tasting tours.  He pointed out that the flight to Vermont alone would probably cost us more than if we were to just buy every flavor of B&J's they offered at the grocery store.  So that's just what we did.  Over the course of a few months, we bought every flavor of Ben & Jerry's at the Fry's by our house and kept a rating scorecard up on our freezer to keep track of our favorites.  The results were delicious and sometimes shocking - flavors that sounded insanely good ended up being so-so, flavors that sounded strange ended up with high marks across the board.

Here's where we landed:

Top Flavors (Loved By All):

• Half Baked: Chocolate & Vanilla ice cream with Fudge Brownies and Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough.  First place goes to this amazing flavor.  This was no surprise to anyone with a pulse and some taste buds.  This is commonly known as the most delicious flavor of ice cream in the universe.  During the rotation, we tried it 2 or 3 times just to be sure.  Yup.
• Everything But The...: Chocolate & Vanilla Ice Creams mixed with Peanut Butter Cups, Fudge-Covered Toffee Pieces, White Chocolatey Chunks & Fudge-Covered Almonds. I'm not sure why this one surprised me so much. Looking at the ingredient list, everything sounds great. Somehow when they're mixed all together, they're even better. The whole being better than the sum of it's parts and all that. Great flavor, we will add this one to our normal rotation.
• The Tonight Dough: Caramel & Chocolate Ice Creams with Chocolate Cookie Swirls & Gobs of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough & Peanut Butter Cookie Dough. The flavor profile on this one is so similar to Half Baked, that it's no wonder we ranked it 3rd place among all the contenders. Delicious and balanced flavors. And seeing Jimmy Fallon's face made us want to watch Hashtags on YouTube all night - can't beat ice cream and a laugh!
• Brownie Batter Core: Chocolate & Vanilla Ice Creams with Fudge Brownies & a Brownie Batter Core. If there's one thing I love more than brownies, it's brownie batter. Lots of chocolaty deliciousness here, but not overwhelmingly chocolate.
• Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough: Vanilla Ice Cream with Gobs of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. Matt's favorite ice cream flavor overall is chocolate chip. So it's no surprise that when you give him super gourmet cookie dough ice cream, he loves it. I didn't think it was too bad either!
• Mint Chocolate Cookie: Peppermint Ice Cream with Chocolate Sandwich Cookies. Mmm - the cookies in this flavor were even better than Oreo's if you can believe that. If you were to add brownies to this pint, it may very well move up to first place for me. Can someone make that happen? So good.
• Karamel Sutra Core: Chocolate & Caramel Ice Creams with Fudge Chips & a Soft Caramel Core. The caramel core really worked with this flavor. I liked the simplicity, but Matt (the king of caramel) really loved all of the caramel. Surprise, surprise.

Great Flavors (Liked By All):

• Cake My Day: Vanilla cake batter ice cream, vanilla cake pieces, buttercream frosting and raspberry swirls. This is part of a limited batch release that we were happy to find. Cake is my favorite dessert, so I thought this one would shoot to the top of the list for me. Although the flavor was solid, it just doesn't compare to real cake, so I couldn't put it in my top.
• New York Super Fudge Chunk: Chocolate Ice Cream with White & Dark Fudge Chunks, Pecans, Walnuts & Fudge Covered Almonds. Nice and nutty, but had to mix this one with vanilla ice cream so it wasn't so overwhelmingly chocolate.
• Peanut Butter Fudge Core: Chocolate & Peanut Butter Ice Creams with Mini Peanut Butter Cups & a Peanut Butter Fudge Core. Yum to the mini PB cups, and the core on this one was pretty good too. If I were in a really peanut-buttery mood, I would go for this one again.
• Brewed to Matter: Coffee Ice Cream with Fudge Chunks & a Brownie Batter Swirl. This one was a Target exclusive flavor that Matt was happy to find. Coffee and fudge made for a good overall flavor, but we happen to like the coffee flavor of Breyer's a bit better.
• Empower Mint: Peppermint Ice Cream with Fudge Brownies & Fudge Swirls. This one had the brownies I was looking for, but not the cookies! Why can't Empower Mint and Mint Chocolate Cookie team up and make a sweet, sweet, baby for me to eat? Empower Mint is supposed to remind everyone to get out and vote this election season - DO it!!
• Americone Dream: Vanilla Ice Cream with Fudge Covered Waffle Cone Pieces & a Caramel Swirl. This is another one where the flavor is good and we have no REAL complaints. Except that the Frys/Kroger brand waffle cone ice cream is just as good to Matt. And I would prefer if they added nuts to this flavor to remind me of Drumstick ice cream - yum!
• Phish Food: Chocolate Ice Cream with Gooey Marshmallow Swirls, Caramel Swirls & Fudge Fish. I remember eating this one a lot in college, but my tolerance for chocolate must have been higher then. Love the yummy marshmallows and the large chocolate chunks, but had to cut this one with vanilla ice cream to avoid being overwhelmed by chocolate.
• Coffee Toffee Bar Crunch: Coffee Ice Cream with Fudge-covered Toffee Bar Pieces. I thought I had struck Matt gold on this one, since he loves coffee and toffee. But he said that their toffee is just not his favorite (he likes the Caramel Butter Toffee Kroger brand the best and eats it almost every night, so that was the measuring stick it was up against)

Mixed Reviews (Some Likes, Some Dislikes):

• Boom Chocolatta Cookie Core: Mocha & Caramel Ice Creams with Chocolate Cookies, Fudge Flakes & a Chocolate Cookie Core. Matt and I liked this one well enough, but Tori gave it a sad face. Seems like the cores can be a bit polarizing, which makes sense given there is a dominant flavor center that you have to enjoy in order to love the whole pint.
• Cookies & Cream Cheesecake Core: Chocolate & Cheesecake Ice Creams with Chocolate Cookies & a Cheesecake Core. Case in point on the polarity: Matt and Tori really liked this flavor, but I was lukewarm on it! I think the word cheesecake threw me off because it was just the essence or flavor of cheesecake without any of the awesome texture.
• A Swirled of Difference: Peanut butter ice cream with a crunchy peanut butter swirl & a raspberry swirl. Another Target exclusive. I actually thought I liked this one the first time we ate it - it is VERY reminiscent of a peanut butter & jelly sandwich. But we didn't finish the carton night one, and I never found myself wanting to go back to it. So just meh.
• Cherry Garcia: Cherry Ice Cream with Cherries & Fudge Flakes. This is one of the only flavors I ever tried as a kid, so I have a soft spot for Cherry Garcia. But Matt doesn't like cherries, so he knew he wouldn't love it going in. I happily finished this one on my own after his research taste test.

Total Duds:

• Spectacular Speculoos Core: Dark Caramel & Vanilla Ice Creams with Speculoos Cookies & a Speculoos Cookie Butter Core. Man, this one was super disappointing because we really like the Speculoos Cookie Butter from Trader Joe's. Ryan will eat that stuff by the spoonful directly from the jar. It's a cinnamon or gingerbread-like mashed cookie paste. Very holiday and very good. But the ice cream tasted dry and crumbly and not at ALL like the cookie butter. Bummer.
• Chunky Monkey: Banana Ice Cream with Fudge Chunks & Walnuts. I actually don't like anything banana flavored (except for actual bananas) since they remind me of the dentist. That was the flavor novicaine that my dentist always used, so banana flavors make me ill. Matt wasn't wild about it either and we only begrudgingly ate this one.
• Chocolate Therapy: Chocolate Ice Cream with Chocolate Cookies & Swirls of Chocolate Pudding Ice Cream. Ugh, WAY too much chocolate on this one. Not even cutting with vanilla ice cream could save this one. I couldn't even taste the particulates since the chocolate flavor was so overwhelming. Did not finish.
• Coconuts for Caramel Core: Caramel & Sweet Cream Coconut Ice Creams with Fudge Flakes & a Caramel Core. The caramel half of this ice cream was great. But the other half was TOTAL garbage. Initially, I thought that maybe it was in a weird part of the freezer that was causing the sweet cream side to be frozen solid. I couldn't even get a spoonful out without flinging it across the room. And it didn't even seem ice-creamy in flavor. Just like cold coconut shavings. Threw out that half.

So there you have it!  These are all of the flavors at our store (and then some extras, thanks Target!)  We have had such a fun time trying all of these new flavors and learning about what this brand has to offer.  I think Ben & Jerry's is such a fun company, and looking at their other flavors online makes me so hungry!  We are going to try to find the other flavors at different stores near us, so stay tuned for updates on this one :)  

And if anyone at Ben & Jerry's wants to make our Vermont tour dreams come true...let me know! ;)

First bite...not sure what to think...

Delicious! She was totally obsessed!

Our seasoned ice cream eater giving his input

Girls' Night - Tutti Santi and Splitting Checks

We're bringing back the blog!  Most of the posts will probably be quick, but just want to keep a record of fun places we go and things we do on the weekends.  This past weekend was #girlsnight, which my bestie Claudia set up.  The crew included the core (me, Claudia, Jody), as well as a few other friends that I've met a few times (Shannon, Scrapper, Sam) and one new friend (Liz).  Since half of us have kids, we planned for a late dinner so everyone could get their little ones settled before heading out for the night.  Shout out to Matt for putting Baby Girl to bed for me so I could get out of here on  time :)

The restaurant Claudia picked was Tutti Santi - an Italian chain I had never been to before.  The food was ok, but I struggle with Italian restaurants unless they are super high-end.  Simply because I feel like I could make most of the dishes at home pretty easily and just as well (not to mention frozen Stouffer's meals and Trader Joes gnocchi)  I typically love the bread served at the restaurants, but Tutti Santi was lacking here, with basically just room temperature sliced bread with a ton of garlic in it.  The food turned out pretty tasty - I had the Chicken Della Casa (chicken with prosciutto and asparagus in a Brandy sauce) and all of the other girls got either the Ravioli or Fettuccine Alfredo with Shrimp.  I'd say 7 out of 10 stars for food itself.

We had a great time catching up and chatting, rehashing old, hysterical stories, and offering advice on everything from breakups to babies.  It's always so nice to get out of the house, but especially so with a group of smart, fun women to laugh with.

The damper on the night was our weird waiter, who seemed suuuuuuuper annoyed that we wanted to split the check among the 7 of us.  I get that check splitting is a pain in the butt.  And if it is restaurant policy not to split checks, I can respect that (although I wouldn't eat there with a group since everyone carries cards instead of cash these days.)  Side rant: I also despise when restaurants charge a split plate fee (like this one did). So we ask the dude to split the check for us and he says it is a pain and it takes him a long time and he just did it for an 11-top table and it took him forever and wah, wah, wah.  So I tell him he can bring us one check, but I'll be splitting out how much everyone pays on their respective cards, so he's going to have to run them all anyways.  Then he failed to bring back cash change for one person (put in $40 for a $21 tab), and avoided us the rest of the night.  When we asked for change on the cash, he stomped over and dramatically gave Jody $15 change and then held up 4 singles and declared "that only leaves $4 for me!"  Then I reminded him that we all tipped him individually on our cards as well, bringing his tip well above the standard 20%...  I think he felt embarrassed by his toddler-style pouting, because when we left, he ran out to the door to yell a polite goodbye to us.  Weirdo.

All in all, a fantastic night with the ladies, even though we forgot to snap a pic until almost everyone had gone.  Love these girls forever!  Until next time -

#girlsnight #blogworthy #croptopsrompersandpoofysleeves