Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Peppermint Crunch!

How do you know that summer is on it's way? There are many ways, my friends, but one of them you can always count on, is when you start to see new Ben & Jerry's flavors pop up in your grocers freezer department. Well I broke out my shorts last week and two days later while scooping up a few groceries at my local Walmart I found this...

I slam dunked this pint right into my cart and headed for the checkout counter, because folks, when you run a fun food blog like this one, you can't waste any time! Readers need to know about this and it's up to us to break the story! We're kind of like the Anderson Coopers of the snack food world...but not nearly as sexy.

See that? It's a Mint Chocolate Cookie Ball!

So how was it? Pretty damn awesome. Signature Ben & Jerry's chocolate ice cream with thick white peppermint swirls, gooey fudge swirls and chocolate covered mint cookie balls. They do a great job of having a bunch of different chocolates here and each one stands out on it's own.  If you're a big fan of Thin Mint Girl Scout Cookies, you might just want to track this ice cream down this instant and buy every pint you can, because I'm pretty sure that every ice cream that has every declared itself some sort of Thin Mint inspired ice cream would bow before this one and beg for mercy.

The cookie balls are especially great and are scattered throughout the ice cream in just the right amount. They are like delicious cannonballs that bombard your mouth with a blast of chocolate & peppermint just when you think that you can't take anymore. I'm not going to lie, I almost took down this entire pint in one sitting, but in the end cooler heads prevailed and I left about a third of it in the freezer for later. 

So in the end I give Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Peppermint Crunch a solid A. It doesn't reinvent the Mint/Cookie ice cream, but it does it better than most even dream of. 

Now if we can only get Ben & Jerry to release their Coconut Seven Layer Bar ice cream in stores. I have to drive 3 hours to the factory in Vermont every summer to get one! 

This might be the greatest ice cream of all time... Coconut 7 Layer Bar!

But until they do, I'll keep making that trek. It's a beautiful drive, the factory tour is always fun (plus you get free ice cream at the end!) oh yeah...and you get to take your picture like this...

-Review by Rich!