Reviews: Ben & Jerry's Late Night Snack and Clusterfluff

In my last post I wrote about the danger of going to the grocery store on an empty stomach. At right is the result. Three different flavors of Ben & Jerry's!

So Clusterfluff* had real potential to be a favorite. My favorite ice cream sundae at Friendly's is the Reese's Pieces Sundae. Probably my all time favorite ice cream ever was Brigham's short run Fluffernutter Ice Cream. I like peanut butter and fluff in my ice cream. So when I saw Clusterfluff (Peanut Butter Ice Cream with Caramel Cluster Pieces, Peanut Butter & Marshmallow Swirls.) in the freezer cabinet, it went right into the cart. I knew my husband would love it too, so it was for sure a winner.

While overall I thought it was yummy, there were two things that disappointed me...I didn't really see any marshmallow swirls, and in turn didn't really specifically taste them. Perhaps though, I was distracted by my other huge disappointment. I found the "caramel cluster pieces" to have the texture of stale, um, I don't really know. The closest I can come to describe the texture is stale popcorn or ice cream cones.

Of all three, Late Night Snack (Vanilla Bean Ice Cream with Salty Caramel Swirls & Fudge Covered Potato Chip Clusters) was my favorite of the three. (Yes, Drea, I finally tried it, and yes, Leah, good choice in favorites!) I loved the caramel swirls in the vanilla base -- I have concluded that I think that vanilla is the best base flavoring for mix-ins. As for the fudge covered potato chip clusters? Yum! I liked surprise saltiness in the sea of sweetness. It was a nice complement.

Maybe I am a little biased because I love love love Jimmy Fallon, who inspired this ice cream. My all time favorite Saturday Night Live sketches is Jeffrey's where Jimmy Fallon and Sean Hayes start laughing so hard in the middle of it...I so wish I could find a video link but I can't! For some reason it's really really hard to come by!) A couple of months ago I was invited last minute to a B&J press release in NYC. My sister and I tried to arrange getting down there, but it didn't happen. They didn't say what for and how long it would be, and the logistics of getting me from Massachusetts, to meet Arianna in Connecticut, to have someone watch baby Violet and finally get to NYC for something that could have lasted five minutes seemed a little much for one day. Later on we found it was a press release for Late Night Snack and Jimmy Fallon was there -- we both knew it still would have been too hard to get to it, but we were SO sad we missed Jimmy!

Anyway, I truly digressed there, but just as I like Jimmy Fallon best, of the three ice creams I tried, I liked Late Night Snack the best as well. Jimmy, I'd be proud to put my name to that flavor, too. Jimmy, though my husband likes you too, he's a fair weather friend, and when push came to shove, he chose Clusterfluff as his favorite of the three.

*Note: Ben & Jerry's site, as I said in my previous post, is kind of frustrating because it is done in Flash rather than HTML. While it's pretty to the eye, it's not searchable and it's not easy to link directly to any of the flavors I write about. If you want to learn more about them, you need to go to their "freezer case" and scroll through to find the flavor you are interested in. Sorry we can't link you directly.