Ben & Jerry's Core - Peanut Butter Ice Cream (Waitrose) [By @Cinabar]

Peanut butter is a funny thing. My taste buds tell me it should be served sweet, and that it goes well with chocolate. Here in the UK though peanut butter tends to be savoury, or served on its own spread on toast. There is a growing audience for peanut butter and the sweet toothed, with a Kit Kat being released, and more and more Reeses goodies on the shelves too, so I know I’m not alone. Since reading that NLi10 had tied out the Ben & Jerry’s peanut butter ice cream, I had been on the hunt for it to try out myself.
In theory, this sounds like it should be close to being my dream ice cream, it seems to be a good mix of flavours with a clever array of ingredients. When I took the lid of the ice cream and dug in, I could see that there were two tones of ice cream, one side vanilla and one side peanut butter, and the core, as they call it, was raspberry jam. This seems to have a bit more of the American influence as one of their famed sandwiches if PB&J, so popular it has its own abbreviation, peanut butter and jam! Wow! As I was scooping it into bowl, I soon spotted that the chocolate element hadn’t been forgotten, and there were chocolates filled with peanut butter scattered in the ice cream too.
I gave it a try, and found it was a total delight to the taste buds. There is so much going on here, but whatever combination of flavours the spoon picked up, it just worked. The vanilla ice cream was super creamy and indulgent. The peanut butter ice cream is rich and very nutty, the peanut flavour is distinct, and it almost has a salty edge to the taste. The jam core was well balanced, it was a strong raspberry taste, but it was sharp and zingy with a full on taste. I loved the chocolate peanut butter cups dotted throughout the ice cream too, they added that cocoa goodness, an element of fun to the texture, and delivered a purer shot of peanut butter. My only negative comment is I wished that there had been more of them in the ice cream, because they were a fab addition to it.
I think that this is the nicest Ben & Jerry’s ice cream combination I have tried, and to be fair I’ve never had a bad one! I loved the addition of the jam being the core, far more than I have like previous chocolate centres; it was very fresh and different and complemented the peanut butter perfectly. I think the American might just be on to something! This is my new favourite ice cream. :-)

By Cinabar