Culinary Circle Caramel Brownie Escape

When I went to the grocery store last week I was fully prepared to do my usual, "Ugh, they never have anything new!" grumble, but I was pleasantly surprised.  (Side note - this week I found THREE of the new Talenti flavors.  THREE!)  I've seen other Culinary Circle products, but this is the first time I saw Culinary Circle ice cream.  At first I was going to pick up a Cherry Amaretto.  That is, until I saw this baby.  Culinary Circle Caramel Brownie Escape is described as

Chocolate ice cream with fudge and caramel swirls and chocolate brownie pieces.

Awkwardly tall container.

This ice cream has it going on.  Unf.  This was a quart of ice cream, but it was so good that, despite how much there was, I barely took any pictures because every time I served myself a bowl I inhaled it.  Oh well, I have a few pictures.

The first taste to hit my tastebuds was chocolate-splosion.  Srsly. This was actually a really really decent milk chocolate flavor.  The caramel swirls were quite liquidy and plentiful throughout the ice cream.  It was a bit salty, and imbued the entire quart with a lovely saltiness that really complemented the chocolate flavor.  Without that saltiness, this ice cream would be in danger of being just another brownie-mix-in chocolate ice cream, but the saltiness makes in really unique.

You can see a bit of the caramel swirl at the front of this pint.

The brownies chunks were quite large and extremely chewy.  They had a great texture, but needed to be slightly more fudgey to really stand out against the insanely chocolatey base.  I don't want to steer you wrong, this is a very small quibble, and overall I thought the brownie chunks were tasty.

Now for the fudge swirl.  I didn't actually read the description of this ice cream before I ate it.  I was expecting the brownie chunks and caramel swirl from the description, but the fudge 'swirl' took me by surprise.  I put 'swirl' in quotes because this was more like large, soft chunks of fudge than a proper swirl.  The fudge was fudge-y enough that it stood up to the chocolate base and definitely had a flavor distinct from the base.  It was softer than proper fudge chunks, but harder than a proper swirl.  Think poor man's Graeter's chocolate chips.  I was so pleasantly surprised when I found my first humongous chunk of fudge.

Chunk of the fudge swirl with a bit o the caramel swirl hanging on.  These suckers were big.

This ice cream was not as dense as super-premium brands, but that worked well with this flavor.  Sometimes I feel like flavors that are this chocolate-y and mix-in heavy that are also dense can be a bit overwhelming.  Also, this was not super expensive (I don't remember exactly, but maybe $5 for the quart?).  A great, budget-friendly ice cream!