The Good: Tastes great, Not terrible on the nutrition front, Fair trade certified
The Bad: No real cheesecake flavor, More expensive than other ice creams.
The Basics: Ben & Jerry’s Pumpkin Cheesecake Ice Cream is a limited batch ice cream that rivals the limited edition pumpkin pie ice creams with a superior flavor, but at a higher price.
I am becoming a big fan of seasonal and limited edition ice cream flavors. Last year, I was delighted to try the Edy’s Pumpkin Ice Cream (reviewed here!) and it remained one of my seasonal favorites . . . until I discovered the new, limited batch Ben & Jerry’s Pumpkin Cheesecake ice cream. More than even the Edy’s Pumpkin ice cream, the Ben & Jerry’s Pumpkin Cheesecake ice cream accurately captures the flavor of pumpkin pie. While the ice cream does nothing on the cheesecake front, it tastes perfectly like pumpkin pie and in that regard, it is an incredibly satisfying ice cream. To be fair to Ben & Jerry’s, cheesecake is a tough flavor to nail in an ice cream, but Ben & Jerry’s shouldn’t have promised the flavor if they couldn’t deliver. Instead, this should have been called Pumpkin Pie; if it had, even with the added expense, it would have been a perfect ice cream.
Basics
Ben & Jerry’s ice cream comes in a pint container. The Pumpkin Cheesecake Ice Cream is a mostly smooth ice cream with a swirl of graham cracker crust in it. The swirl was fairly minimal, coming in about one in every four spoonfuls of the ice cream.
At (locally) $5.99 a pint, the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream is an expensive ice cream, though the flavor is worth it. This is made of decent ingredients and it is definitely worth the price. This is a Limited Edition flavor that is a smashing success for Ben & Jerry’s, despite not having the right name for the flavor!
Ease Of Preparation
The Pumpkin Cheesecake 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 Pumpkin Cheesecake Ice Cream!
Taste
Pumpkin Cheesecake ice cream smells like nutmeg and cinnamon, which seem to be the two primary spices people associate with pumpkin spice. The Pumpkin Cheesecake ice cream is aromatic only as it warms up a little; initially, it has almost no scent to it.
In the mouth, Ben & Jerry’s Pumpkin Cheesecake ice cream tastes like cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg and pumpkin. The flavors blend to taste precisely like pumpkin pie; there is little flavor of cheesecake in this ice cream. The irony here is that most of the ice creams that try to taste like pumpkin pie only come across tasting like pumpkin spices, not pumpkin pie. The Pumpkin Cheesecake ice cream has no real flavor of cheesecake to it. Instead, it tastes just like pumpkin pie and the graham cracker swirl tastes precisely like graham cracker crust.
This ice cream leaves a very sweet aftertaste on the tongue, but nothing undelightful or unpleasant. In fact, more than most ice creams, the Pumpkin Cheesecake ice cream leaves a taste on the tongue that constantly, pleasantly reminds the consumer of the initial flavors, making it a constant treat!
Nutrition
The Ben & Jerry’s Pumpkin Cheesecake Ice Cream is a fairly light ice cream with a medium light additive (the density of the graham cracker swirl breaks up the otherwise smooth ice cream). The pint represents four half-cup servings. In the half-cup serving, there are 260 calories, 140 of which are from fat. The fifteen grams of fat represent 23% of the RDA of fat, with 35% of one’s RDA of saturated fat coming in the 7 grams of saturated fat in this ice cream. One serving has 60 mg of cholesterol (that’s 22% of the RDA!) and 125 mg of Sodium (5% RDA). The only other real nutrients are four grams of protein and 10% of the RDA of Calcium and 8% of the RDA of Vitamin A in the Pumpkin Cheesecake Ice Cream.
Ben & Jerry’s has decent ingredients, too. Made primarily of Cream, Skim milk, and water! There is nothing unpronounceable in the ingredients list. The Pumpkin Cheesecake Ben & Jerry’s is Kosher, but not marked as gluten free. There are no allergy warnings on the package, but 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; my pint had an expiration date of March 12, 2015.
The Pumpkin Cheesecake 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 Pumpkin Cheesecake ice cream is great and it is well worth stocking up on while it is still available. This ice cream is enough to make one wish it was autumn year round!
For other Ben & Jerry’s ice creams, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Limited Batch Pina Colada
Limited Edition Cotton Candy
New York Super Fudge Chunk
Cheesecake Brownie
Willie Nelson's Country Peach Cobbler
8.5/10
For other food reviews, please visit my Food Review Index Page for an organized listing!
© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |
No comments:
Post a Comment