In the months before going full vegan, I ate a lot of Ben & Jerry’s. I didn’t keep ice cream in the house for my own protection, but whenever I got the urge, the gas station down the street had me covered with fancy pints the price of premium half-gallons. Once vegan though, I didn’t feel like tolerating ice cream flavors that taste like coconut when the label says chocolate, and the soy ice cream tried didn’t win me over.
Conveniently, Ben & Jerry’s released a new almond milk-based ice cream with four flavors. They’re 100% certified vegan, so I went and bought all four to taste test them.
Chunky Monkey and Chocolate Fudge Brownie are dairy-free versions of existing flavors, whereas Coffee Caramel Fudge and P.B. & Cookies are new, unique flavors just for us.
Currently, they are $5.79 each at my Publix (St. Pete, FL), a dollar more than the dairy version, and you better believe the BOGO deals are only for the dairy versions, but they are certainly priced competitively for vegan ice cream.
Chunky Monkey
Everyone has different preferences on banana ripeness. I like my bananas spotted brown. Chunky Monkey reminded me of green bananas. The first time I had this, I put it away relatively quick. It just had this weird syrupy fake banana flavor to it. Maybe I let it melt too much before trying it. The second time around, it was much more palatable, but I would not buy again because a lot of raw vegan ice cream recipes use bananas. I used to make raw vegan banana walnut pudding in the past a lot also. These ingredients are far too familiar and ordinary for vegans who may have tried making their own ice cream.
Chocolate Fudge Brownie
I have issues with chocolate ice cream. I don’t like chocolate coconut milk ice cream and I was only able to eat chocolate soy ice cream with the addition of cacao nibs. They always feel like watered down chocolate with no cream or richness. Ben & Jerry’s attempt did a good job by me solely due to the brownie bits. If it isn’t going to have a perfect chocolate taste, it ought to have some diversity in flavor. Unfortunately, the brownie bits reminded me of cold chocolate cake compressed into this ice cream and I can barely taste any of the fudge in the fudge brownie. This weird, chalky watered-down taste is also there. I just can’t get into this.
Coffee Caramel Fudge
My girlfriend says it tastes too much like coffee, but quitting caffeine means quitting coffee, so this is now an uncommon flavor in my life. It does have real coffee, but in negligible amounts amounts. We finally have some swirls! There is a generous amount of caramel throughout the ice cream with plenty of chips. Sometimes it feels like the chips have caramel inside. Or are these java chocolate chips? Who knows, but it’s delicious and convincing in texture.
P.B. & Cookies
The amazing chunky salty peanut butter swirl makes the texture feel way creamier than the others. You get the best of both worlds with the cookies: nice sized chunks, crumbs, and full sized cookies. The ice cream and swirl alone are amazing enough and the cookies are there just to destroy any remaining hope the other flavors had of being the best. I have taste tested these over the course of a few days and have finished two other P.B. & Cookies with my girlfriend and still have the original containers for the rest.
Overall Impressions
Ben & Jerry’s dairy-free ice cream is definitely a winner for me, but not all the flavors were created equal. Not to mention, the second ingredient after almond milk is liquid sugar, so you’re paying $6 for frozen sweetened almond milk with chunks of things readily available to you. These are great for a dirty bulk, but this is still vegan junk food at best. However, we could all use a treat now and then. The new recipes, Coffee Caramel Fudge and P.B. & Cookies are highly recommended; go get ’em!
What do you think? Is P.B. Cookie truly the best? Would you break vegan to see if something went wrong in the making of a dairy-free Chunky Monkey? If you’re not fully committed, find out for us and let us know in the comments!