Expanding my limitations

Here it comes. Expansion. Now we have some ice cream instead of candy (on the day I find out about this. That thing is enormous.) Three flavors of Ben & Jerry's I gave the samplin' this weekend. At the time I was using my computer as a television and watching UFC 104, so I made actual tasting notes. On paper. Made me feel like a big shot.

American Apple Pie - Described as "Apple Pie Ice Cream with Apples, Pie Crust Pieces, & a Cinnamon Streusel Swirl" and I think my major issue with this flavor is right there. Apple Pie flavored ice cream, and then inserting all the ingredients of apple pie. A little redundant? Too much going on. The ice cream flavor didn't exactly scream Apple Pie, just kind of went unnoticed. I think it might have been better if they approached it as Apple Pie a la mode with vanilla ice cream and all those ingredients. The best part of it is the apples. They are for real. Little moist cinnamony pieces of baked-like apples, and there's lots of them. They're definitely the big part of the scoop. The pie crust pieces were hard to find, and I think it's because pie crust is light and flaky, easily lost in the ice cream. I actually wasn't convinced they were in there, so I took a scoop out and melted it in the microwave to see if I could spot them. They're there, but they're soft.

Pumpkin Cheesecake - "Pumpkin Cheesecake Ice Cream with a thick graham cracker swirl." There are several ways to make me buy something, primary among them being to feature pumpkin. Maybe my favorite flavor of stuff. So I was excited for this. This was kind of a weird meld of pumpkin and cheesecake. I think I've had pumpkin cheesecake once in my life, and it's hard to believe this flavor was very far from spot on. But it was a little strange, it messed with my head a little. I could never really taste pumpkin and cheesecake at once, it would go back and forth whichever one I thought I was trying to taste at the time. Kind of like in Hook where they believe in a food fight and there's a feast. Bangarang. Whatever you were looking to taste, you could taste. But it was definitely pumpkin cheesecake, maybe more on the cheesecake side. I guess I kind of wanted pumpkin pie, but that might have involved those pie crust pieces from above, which would have been a downgrade. Bringing me to the graham cracker swirl. At first I thought this aspect was a major disappointment. It was just a little grainy mix in with the ice cream, so there was a difference in texture but the taste wasn't a factor. I would hit a small chunk now and then. But I dug down a little deeper into the pint and THERE it was. A BIG swirl, and like a good swirl, it was thicker in some parts and thinner in others. When you hit those big chunks, it was delicious.

Ginger Snap! - Here we go. "Brown Sugar Cinnamon Ice Cream with Gingersnap Cookies and a Ginger Caramel Swirl." Wow. I was stoked. First of all, pumpkin aside, what's better than cinnamon? If I want a flavored ice cream, cinnamon is a go to. Whenever I go to Maggie Moo's, my favorite thing to get is a mix of Cinnamoo and Sweet Cream. I'm not even sure why I get the Sweet Cream, the Cinnamoo is so good. So, this was a great base to start with. (And by the way, I recently got some Oatmeal Cookie Chunk from a Scoop Shop, also a cinnamon ice cream base, and also a homerun. The cookie chunks weren't very good, but the ice cream was pretty much worth it.) The cookie pieces were pretty much enormous. I'm not really sure if a regular ginger snap is supposed to be crunchy or chewy, so I want to say this is somewhere between a moist ginger snap and dough. They're kind of like thick streaks rather than little chunks like your average chocolate chip cookie dough. I loved them. The caramel swirl was creamy, which was good. How often do you buy something with fudge or peanut butter swirl and the swirl is frozen and cracking. Bad! It should be like plasma. Anyway, the swirl, there was not an overbearing load of it, but that was okay, because really I think it's unnecessary. What does caramel really have to do with ginger snaps anyway? I was definitely impressed with this one. If I were going to take one of these three and stock my freezer with a lifetime's supply, it would be this one.