Ben and Jerry's Peanut Butter Jam Session

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I'm a first year graduate student in the math PhD program at the University of Minnesota, and I have a big, important pre-lim exam tomorrow afternoon, so CLEARLY my number one priority right now is to write about ice cream.  Today I also cleaned the bathroom for the first time in weeks and practiced doing handstands, both of which HAD to be done TODAY because reasons.

This week I tried the Target-exclusive Ben and Jerry's flavor Peanut Butter Jam Session.  This is described as Peanut Butter Ice Cream with a crunchy Peanut Butter Swirl and a Raspberry Swirl.


I love peanut butter, it is one of my favorite foods ever, and I often carry a jar around in my backpack for a quick snack.  Despite that, I was quite apprehensive about this flavor.  It's a non-traditional ice cream flavor, but that doesn't tend to scare me off (I'm on a quest to make or buy avocado ice cream, and just recently sampled a Roasted Garlic Almond Chip ice cream).  I think I imagined that the Raspberry Swirl would be like the raspberry jelly in a jelly doughnut.  There's nothing wrong with jelly doughnut jelly, I just think it would taste weird with peanut butter because it's so sweet.  Who thought to combine PB&J in the first place?  I certainly would not have been inspired to try those two flavors together.

As it turns out, the raspberry swirl tastes just like good ol' American Smuckers Raspberry Jam, and the overall experience was like ... well ... eating a PB&J ... in ice cream form.  Ben and Jerry's hit the nail right on it's delicious delicious head.  I mean look at the picture below, that little swirly looks just like peanut butter, tastes just like peanut butter, it is peanut butter!

Yum!

The only thing I didn't love about this ice cream was the lack of the signature Ben and Jerry's chunks.  The peanut butter swirl was only nominally chunky.  Actually, the first time I got a peanut I thought it was a little piece of hardened ice cream - like what happens when you leave ice cream in the freezer for a long time.  I know chunky peanut butter is not everybody's jam (hah! couldn't resist!), but as a lover of extra chunky peanut butter, I feel that B&J's let the opportunity to make a great flavor slip by.

The scoop: Loved this, wish it was more chunky.

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