Ben & Jerry’s Goodbye Yellow Brickle Road Ice Cream
Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Holdings, Inc.
$4.99
I love ice cream. Ice cream is to my mouth what music is to my ears. Before this bloody recession hit I used to keep nine pints of ice cream in my freezer. I miss those days.
I love ice cream so much that I eat it despite that I’m 99% sure I’m lactose intolerant.
Being the fan of ice cream that I am, I couldn’t help but jump at the chance to try Ben & Jerry’s Goodbye Yellow Brickle Road. Obviously it’s a play on the song by Elton John, whose visage obviously graces the package. (Actually it’s not obvious, as the checkout dude informed me it was Conan O’Brien.)
Now, I’m pretty loyal to Ben & Jerry. I don’t eat ice cream for political causes or ingredients; I eat it for flavor. I’m not supporting a cause; I’m supporting my tongue. Ben & Jerry have never let me down.
Goodbye Yellow Brickle Road is described as “chocolate ice cream, peanut butter cookie dough, brickle candy pieces & white chocolatey chunks” and if it sounds like there’s a lot going on, there is.
The first strike against it is the chocolate ice cream being the base, as I’m not really a fan of chocolate. I tolerate it, but I don’t seek it out. Secondly is the one-two punch of peanut butter cookie dough. I haven’t enjoyed cookie dough since it popped onto the pop cultural radar (I remember when it was still a Midwest thing that I only experienced on summer trips to Iowa) and I find that peanut butter is just a bit too strong a flavor when it comes to ice cream.
However I am a fan of both brickle and white chocolate (oh the irony). So by my count this flavor had as much going for it as it had going against it. Plus it had the Ben & Jerry’s track record of quality going for it.
It’s just too much going on, but at the same time, it’s nearly impossible to get a bite that contains all three of the chunky ingredients, meaning you never really get to see how the flavors compliment each other. And any time you get peanut butter cookie dough and one of the others all you really taste is the peanut butter. The white chocolate chunks stand well on their own, but sadly the taste of brickle is just too weak. All you really get is the texture of the brickle and a hint of flavor.
Despite its shortcomings, it’s not really a bad flavor of ice cream, per se, but I would be remiss not to point out that I was a bit disappointed in Ben & Jerry. Goodbye Yellow Brickle Road probably won’t be one of my mainstay flavors, but by the same token I won’t avoid it either.
