Post by stevejaros on Feb 23, 2014 9:47:22 GMT -5
I like mint chocolate chip ice cream and also cookies and cream ice cream, so when I heard that Blue Bell had mixed them together into this concoction well, I just had to mix it in to my weekend ice cream feast rotation. Blue Bell says Mint Cookies ‘n Cream is a smooth mint ice cream combined with mint crème-filled chocolate cookies and semi-sweet chocolate chips. Sounds good to me, so let's dig in!
Peeling off the lid, I immediately liked what I saw. I had let the ice cream melt in the refrigerator for an hour or so, and this gave the light green base a creamy appearance. I also noticed the flecks of chocolate chips and some evidence of the cookies. Digging in, I found the base mint ice cream to have a delightful mint taste. However, the base also struck my palate as "light", almost as a kind of ice-milk. The mint flavoring was not very strong and the ice cream was, despite the initial melting, somewhat "fluffy" in texture. This base simply does not have the rich, creamy texture of some of Blue Bell's superior flavors. That said, the mix-ins were not in any way disappointing. The chocolate chips were small and flaky, but also provided in plentiful abundance. The best aspect of this flavor was the chocolate cookies. Blue Bell used "house" cookies (i.e., they did not contract with a cookie company like Oreo's for the mix-in) but this works just fine. These cookies have a rich dark chocolate flavor and the larger chunks have the promised mint filling, which provides a creamier mint flavor than the base ice cream. As you can see in this picture, some of these cookie chunks are downright HUGE, and combined with the chocolate chips they provide some needed heft to the fluffier base.
Overall, mint cookies and cream is, like any good mint ice cream should be, cool, tasty, and refreshing, and arguably a better spring/summer release than something for late winter. The weakness here is the base, which is merely average, but the quality and quantity of the mixes raises this into a higher domain.
Grade: B
Where Found: Winn Dixie (Baton Rouge)
Peeling off the lid, I immediately liked what I saw. I had let the ice cream melt in the refrigerator for an hour or so, and this gave the light green base a creamy appearance. I also noticed the flecks of chocolate chips and some evidence of the cookies. Digging in, I found the base mint ice cream to have a delightful mint taste. However, the base also struck my palate as "light", almost as a kind of ice-milk. The mint flavoring was not very strong and the ice cream was, despite the initial melting, somewhat "fluffy" in texture. This base simply does not have the rich, creamy texture of some of Blue Bell's superior flavors. That said, the mix-ins were not in any way disappointing. The chocolate chips were small and flaky, but also provided in plentiful abundance. The best aspect of this flavor was the chocolate cookies. Blue Bell used "house" cookies (i.e., they did not contract with a cookie company like Oreo's for the mix-in) but this works just fine. These cookies have a rich dark chocolate flavor and the larger chunks have the promised mint filling, which provides a creamier mint flavor than the base ice cream. As you can see in this picture, some of these cookie chunks are downright HUGE, and combined with the chocolate chips they provide some needed heft to the fluffier base.
Overall, mint cookies and cream is, like any good mint ice cream should be, cool, tasty, and refreshing, and arguably a better spring/summer release than something for late winter. The weakness here is the base, which is merely average, but the quality and quantity of the mixes raises this into a higher domain.
Grade: B
Where Found: Winn Dixie (Baton Rouge)