Ben & Jerry’s is known for making a lot of smart decisions (like using fair trade ingredients) and some not so smart (bring back the Pucker Upper flavor, dammit!) but where we have here is an example of a no-brainer. This is how I imagine the meeting went:
“We’d like to sell more stuff…is there anything we’ve got lying around?”
“Well, we could just sell bags of the chunks of stuff that people dig into our ice cream to find…”
“….Intriguing. You think people would go for it?”
And here we are. And apparently people are going for it–looks like by this point, there’s seven kinds of these. I snagged the three I could find. Seldom in the history of reviewing a food product has there been such an easy thing to describe. Because if you’ve had ice cream…even if you’ve never had Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream…you know what purpose these chunks serve.
The basic version is of course the Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Chunks. A short time ago, I did a survey of every brand of “edible” chocolate chip cookie dough…trying each of them in turn (you know, for science)…and while some were better than others, there doesn’t seem to be a true substitute for the actual “it’s a bad idea to eat this says science” chocolate chip cookie dough. Maybe the missing ingredient is the element of danger and the possibility of illness? More experimentation is needed.
That being said, if you really want to safely consume the stuff, this is the next best thing. Same with the Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough chunks. They are both rather tasty and can be sprinkled on lesser ice creams to up their game considerably.
The one that requires a tad more explanation is the Half Baked variety, it’s that’s chocolate chip cookie dough chunks plus brownie chunks. The problem here is lack of context. And by context, I mean ice cream. Cold brownie chunks in ice cream are brownie chunks in ice cream. Cold brownie chunks by themselves are just…cold brownie chunks. In their natural cold state, they lack verve. Perhaps the key is to heat them up and serve them with ice cream? Again: more experimentation is needed.
These are great, but for the safety of your own self, buy them with a particular use in mind. Like adding them to your dessert of choice. If you have no true objective (like just buying them to write a review about them, for example), you’ll probably find yourself consuming them much faster than you had any intention to. And the serving size listed is just two tablespoons. Lilliputians would eat more than two tablespoons of this stuff in a sitting. They’re called “snackable dough,” but it’s not likely to be just a snack. So have a plan. That’s all I’m suggesting.
