Aldi's line of premium ice cream pints has two new flavors! They've added Swirling Strawberry (strawberry cheesecake), and this new peanut butter one. Just like the three original Aldi offerings: Make Fudge Not War, Brookie Dough, and Thank You Cherry Much, these new flavors are dupes for popular Ben & Jerry's flavors (Peanut Butter Cup & Strawberry Cheesecake) only these cost half as much.
I'm happy to see this line expanding, but I personally wasn't excited by these two new flavors. They aren't as globally appealing as the other three, but for two bucks? I'll check 'em out anyway!
Admittedly, this is a pretty lame name for an ice cream, but it's more creative than it's name-brand counter part: Ben & Jerry's "Peanut Butter Cup." So Aldi gets a few points for creativity, but that doesn't make up for the gaudy packaging.
Ben & Jerry's design team have this pint beat. Look at this! We've got a clip-art sheep character with a peanut butter pompadour and a black n' white cookie-looking...hair-do? Outfit? Whatever the terminology, let's face it, it's not pretty. Well the food imagery is pretty nice, but that's about it. It's not a looker, but it's what's inside that counts. I am a BIG fan of the other three flavors, so let's see if this is worthy of joining their ranks.
Once the safety seal is removed, we see that the ice cream inside is a warm coffee-color with hints of peanut butter cup hiding underneath the surface. These mix-ins look a little small, like peanut butter cup shrapnel, and not the mini peanut butter cups promised on the outside packaging, but maybe we'll see more mix-ins when we scratch the surface. I grabbed a spoon and dug in to get a closer look.
The surface was full of broken peanut butter cup shrapnel, but once I got about a half an inch into the pint I started finding half-cup-sized pieces mixed in, but no in-tact cups. The ice cream base is rich and full of peanut butter flavoring, and even though peanut butter doesn't make my list of top 10 ice cream flavors, I'd have to say this one is very enjoyable. It's bold, authentically flavored, and it leaves a lingering peanut butter taste in your mouth long after you've eaten it. Base-wise, this is pretty great, but I do have a problem with this pint...
Even though the mix-ins were a bit on the small side, there were a lot of them. Almost enough to have a peanut butter cup in every third bite of ice cream. Which sounds great, but it wasn't.
I'm a Reese's snob. Their peanut butter filling is the best, with it's irresistible crumbly texture and salty flavoring, there's just no beating it. These cups are smooth-peanut-butter-filled impostors. They have all the chocolatey sweetness of Reeses cups, but the filling is on-par with dollar tree RM Palmer peanut butter cups. I am not a fan and actually found myself avoiding them as I continued eating this pint, and in what world does that ever happen? Usually the mix ins are what we aim for with our spoons, or passive aggressively fight over when sharing a pint with a friend, and here I am actively avoiding them? That is not okay.
My boyfriend and I typically share a pint of Aldi ice cream while mindlessly watching something on Netflix after a long work week (this time we inhaled season one of Atypical, it was pretty cute), and after a few spoonfuls, he tapped out. He didn't care for the mix-ins either, and found the peanut butter base to be a little too one-note-peanut-buttery for his palette. In his words: "This is all just dull, sweet, peanut butter. It's so dull that it's nasty."
To be fair, neither of us have ever had the Ben & Jerry's version, so I can't say if this is a true dupe or not, but I can safely say we won't be stocking this flavor in our household freezer. It's just not for us, but peanut butter fans should seek it out and let me know what you think. Just because we're peanut butter plebeians, doesn't mean that this isn't a flavor worth trying for all you peanut butter addicts out there.
All My Aldi Premium Ice Cream Pint Flavors & Reviews So far:
Keep Up with My Daily Adventures on Social Media!© Maria Smith http://poison-and-antidote.net
No comments:
Post a Comment