Ben and Jerry's Chubby Hubby

Last Sunday I stood in the freezer section of my grocery store having a real first world problems meltdown moment.  I was getting really frustrated and pouting because sometimes it seems like the ice cream selection at my local grocery store sucks!  Not that it's really all that bad, it just takes them forever to get anything new.  Like, I don't even think they have the cookie cores yet.  They have a horrible Talenti selection (which I really don't understand because Talenti is based in Minneapolis).  Then I realized how ridiculous I was being.  So to turn my grumpy face around, I decided to pick up and review a pint of Ben and Jerry's Chubby Hubby, which is the ice cream flavor that truly sparked my ice cream enlightenment.

Let me expound.  I have always loved ice cream, but until a certain point in my life I thought that ice cream was ice cream.  There was chocolate, and vanilla, and strawberry, and Neapolitan, cookie dough, etc... I was aware that brands like Haagen-Dazs had deliciously different flavors like Caramel Cone and White Chocolate Raspberry Truffle, but I didn't really care about the difference between a Caramel Cone or a Moose Tracks ice cream.

Sometime in the two years after I graduated from college I picked up a pint of Ben and Jerry's Chubby Hubby.  If you're not in the know, this ice cream contains absolutely giant chocolate covered pretzels.  It was the first time I ever had anything like that in an ice cream, and my mind was blown.  This shit was wonderful.  THERE WERE PRETZELS IN THERE WHO DOES THAT?  This is the first time I really became conscious or cared about the distinctions between ice cream.  After this experience I certainly put more care into selecting flavors, but the ice cream enlightenment was no longer on the surface of my consciousness it was bubbling deep in my subconscious mind.  Finally it got bubbly enough that it burst through the surface, and I decided I loved eating and talking about ice cream enough that I should start a blog.  So here we are, all thanks to Chubby Hubby.

This ice cream is described as

Vanilla malt ice cream with peanutty fudge-covered pretzels with fudge and peanut-buttery swirls.

First the base.  I don't know, off the top of my head, of any other flavor that utilizes a vanilla malt base.  I'm actually not a huge fan of this base by itself, but this may be due to the fact that I'm not a huge vanilla malt fan.  Chocolate malt, get at me all day every day, but vanilla malt is just not my thing.  Even though I didn't like this base plain, I think it works perfectly with the other elements of this ice cream, so I just try to make sure I get either some swirl or a pretzel in every bite, which is not exactly difficult.

The fudge swirl is the perfect liquidy consistency, and there is enough of it that it doesn't get lost in the ice cream and overpowered by the other elements.  The peanut butter swirl is less (visually) obvious, but it has a strong enough flavor that it imbues the entire pint with a hint of peanut butter flavor.

All about that swirl life.

The main standouts in this ice cream are the fudge covered peanutty pretzels.  These are absolute perfection.  First, they are huge, about the size of the first joint of my thumb.  (I ate the ice cream too fast to do a size comparison shot.  Sorry!)  Also, they are incredibly crunchy. Sometimes pretzels get soggy in ice cream and it's kind of gross, but I think the full fudge coating protects these guys.  It's such a great textural experience.  The smooth thick fudge coating and the crunchy pretzel are so great together.  Also, the saltiness of the pretzel is the perfect complement to the malt flavor of the ice cream base, so any bite with a pretzel is a great bite.  This is Ben and Jerry's chunktastic-ness at its best and most classic.

This ice cream comes in at a hilariously high 340 calories per 1/2 cup (I think most ice creams come in at under 300 calories for the same amount), so it truly lives up to its name.  This is what the witch needed in Hansel and Gretel really needed.