Tillamook Monster Cookie

 Who else is fucking sick of coronavirus restrictions, and more especially being really careful about coronavirus knowing full well others are not while hospitals start to fill to capacity again? New Zealand, I'm not talking to you here, so just shut the fuck up and/or let me move there.

Running is my normal stress relief/coping mechanism for wanting to murder loud typers who don't mute during zoom meetings. I typically run a stupid number of miles per week so that I'm just too fucking tired the rest of the time to care about anything. It really works wonders! Unfortunately, I'm currently out of running due to a tibial stress fracture. That is not entirely true, this week I get to run for one entire minute 4 times. So instead of self-destruction though running, I am now attempting to self destruct by eating an utterly insane amount of sugar. Not infrequently this is in the form of an entire pint of ice cream in one sitting, and this not infrequently occurs more than once a week. (Side note - I am 31. By all rights my metabolism should have slowed way down by this point, but somehow I still have visible abs. I welcome your hate and jealousy.)

I obviously refuse to cut ice cream and sugar completely out of my diet, so in an attempt to consume it a bit more responsibly, I am going to start blogging again. When I blog about ice cream I like to try an ice cream at least 2-3 times to form an opinion of it, so I will hopefully force myself to make a pint last more than 3 minutes.

Tillamook Monster Cookie is my first attempt at this. This ice cream is

Rich cookie dough ice cream with a salted peanut buttery swirl, crispy oats, chocolatey flakes, and sweet candies.

I don't know exactly when this happened because I wasn't paying super close attention to the ice cream selection in stores the past few years, but Kowalski's in Minneapolis and St. Paul now stock a TON of Tillamook, which is AWESOME.

Tillamook Monster Cookie comes in 1.75qt container. I've noticed a huge quality difference between Tillamook pints and the larger Tillamook containers - the pints tend to be some of the best ice cream I've ever had and the larger containers are just kind of so-so, especially for the price. Unfortunately, Monster Cookie continued this trend.

I didn't get any cookie dough notes from the base. It was a great sweet cream base, but I would not have guessed it was cookie dough flavored had it not been in the description. I've tried a few other flavors from various brands that claim to have a cookie dough base that have the same issue. If you're going to incorporate cookie dough into a flavor, I think it's much more successful to use cookie dough chunks.

The salted peanut buttery swirl was fantastic. It had that perfect not-too-brittle, not-too-soft texture that Ben and Jerry's has mastered in their peanut butter swirl. There was just the smallest hint of salt, but it was enough to really make the swirl stand out from the base.

The rest of the elements were almost nonexistent. The oats were definitely not crispy. In fact, I think I didn't notice them because they were nearly the same texture as the base, and oats don't really have a stand-out flavor on their own. There were a few small m&m-like candies mixed in - I think two in my two-scoop bowl.

As a peanut butter swirl ice cream this was fantastic, but as a Monster Cookie ice cream it really fell flat. I give this 🍦🍦/4. I would eat this again and enjoy it, but I wouldn't purchase another container.

🍦 - You couldn't pay me to eat this again
🍦🍦 - I would eat this again, but not buy it
🍦🍦🍦 - I would buy this again
🍦🍦🍦🍦- I need this in my apocalypse bunker