The Catalyst

By Kasey Mortensen, Reporter

Every March of every year, the Ben and Jerry ice cream creators debut a variety of new flavors to spice up their popular treats in the pint size containers. This is quite an exciting event, but if one is not informed about it, they may not know of the upcoming new flavors. The founders of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream do not publicize when a new flavor has been put into the market, they leave it up to the customers to try each flavor. If the product has enough sales and turns out to be a success, Ben and Jerry’s will continue to sell it while the poor flavors that do not succeed go into the flavor graveyard.

Serious Eats columnist, Brad Thomas Parsons, went on the new flavor search all over grocery stores and markets to find what Ben and Jerry had to offer. He had a massive discovery and uncovered six of the new flavors.

Boston cream pie was his first find. This ice cream consists of Boston cream pie ice cream with yellow cake pieces, fudge flakes, and swirls of pasty cream. Parsons mentions that it is more of a classic flavor, such as cake batter, but a little sweeter.

The second flavor was dulce delish, which consists of rich caramel with dark caramel swirls. Parsons opinion of this flavor was that it was a little overwhelming compared to some of the other new flavors, he did not appreciate caramel as a topping or as part of a swirl but still mentioned that, it was a delicious ice cream.

Hannah Teeter’s maple Blondie is the next new ice cream on the list. This flavor is technically a new flavor but has been available since last December. It is a rich maple flavored ice cream with blonde brownie chunks and a maple caramel swirl. This is an exciting ice cream because it is a limited edition flavor. It was named after Vermont native and Olympic snowboarder Hannah Teter.

Parsons said that the next flavor, milk and cookies, was his favorite of the bunch of the new flavors. It was creamy vanilla ice cream with chocolate cookie swirls, chocolate chips, and chocolate chip cookies. He said something like it was a regular cookies and cream ice cream taken to the extreme. He was reminded of a classic black and white milkshake when eating the delicious treat.

Mud pie is the next flavor. Parsons said that this ice cream was the least inspiring, it reminded him excessively much of their flavor Dublin Mudslide. It was not a unique flavor and came on too strong to his senses. However, the chocolate and coffee liqueur ice creams swirl has been popular with other customers due to his lack of success with the flavor.

Peanut brittle was the last ice cream that Parsons tested. This ice cream consisted of peanut brittle ice cream with little peanut brittle pieces with a caramel swirl. He mentions that he might have been caught up in the novelty aspects of the new ice creams to truly appreciate the rick flavor, but liked how it was crunchy.

All of the ice creams have proven to be a success with customers and satisfy their taste buds. One might look out for new and upcoming flavors in the next month, for there are two more to be coming out soon.