My Intro to Cookie Cores.

A little over a year ago, Ben & Jerry's introduced there "Core" line.  Many of them were a combination of two flavors with a sauce at the heart of the pint (be it fudge, raspberry jam, or caramel).  This year some cookie core flavors have been released.  The feature in this post is Peanut Buttah Cookie Core.  I can see how the title works, but I was hoping for "Buttah" to be reserved for some Mike Myers Saturday Night Live flavor.

Getting down to experiencing this flavor, I'd suggest getting a glass of water with it.  There are some ice creams where the water really cleanses the palate.  In my opinion, Americone Dream is one of those flavors, and so is Peanut Buttah Cookie.  The peanut butter cookie core is thick enough to differentiate from the rest of the pint.   The consistency is smoother and more fluid than the graham cracker swirl you fin in cheesecake pints or some pie flavors.  In addition to the core, you encounter three other forms of peanut butter thoroughly mixed.

The base is peanut butter ice cream.  Smooth, sweet, and creamy, with a light color.  The next element thrown into the mix are little peanut butter candy crunchies.  They're all pretty small and uniform.  Aside from being one of the sweetest parts, I think a key role for them is to give the ice cream (sans core) some texture.  It adds to the experience.  With the Core line, you have to target the core with you spoon to make it part of the mouthful.  The main ice cream, having some other parts mixed in affects most of the spoonfuls.  You also get chunks of peanut butter cookie.  In some respects, the  cookies are treated like you'd see in cookies 'n cream,  only the PB cookies are more chewy than crunchy.

Altogether, I really liked it.  It's not often that I encounter peanut butter cookies worked into an ice cream.  I have had peanut butter sauce on ice cream, tasted the crunchies somewhere in my past, but this pint showed me other utilizations for peanut butter in an ice cream and tastefully combine the forms.  I'd compare it to a  theoretical Iron Chef episode where the mystery ingredient is peanut butter.  Instead of a multi-course meal, the consumer's given all these dishes together.

Thank you B&J's.  Great job.