Ben & Jerry's New Exclusive Flavor: Cotton Candy Ice Cream?!

After a few e-mails and a request on our last Ben & Jerry's post, we knew that when we saw it, we had to buy their new offering, Cotton Candy ice cream. But nobody wanted to. We stood in Walmart looking at each other with faces of nervous disgust. "Who's gonna do it?"

I really didn't want to, but someone had to take the bullet, so I grabbed it, threw it in the cart, and hoped that my fellow FGFB brethren would take a 4 dollar bullet for me some time.

I absolutely love that the cow is holding cotton candy

Cotton candy ice cream loaded with candy sprinkles doesn't sound entirely bad, but at the same time- does anyone (other than little kids who haven't learned yet) really like cotton candy? Why would I want crunchy-from-sugar-crystals clumps of disintegrating alien hair in my ice cream? 

Look, Irwin couldn't even bring himself to look at the container!

Although he's clearly still interested. Aren't we all?

When I opened the container, this is the face I made:

This was not what I was expecting. This truly looks alien. 

No hair though!

Taking my first nervous bite, I found that, like with all Ben & Jerry's flavors, this actually wasn't that bad. I hadn't read the ingredients before, so I assumed that the candy pieces were supposed to be little balls of cotton candy. They had that too-much-sugar crispiness to them, and they mostly disintegrated in my mouth in a cotton candy-esque way. I was surprised to find that the ice cream itself is the part that's supposed to be cotton candy flavored, and the candy pieces are just that- candy pieces. 

Ben and Jerry are smart dudes though- they did this on purpose. While on their own, where the ice cream and candy pieces are drastically different, combining the candy and ice cream is what creates the taste illusion of cotton candy. The ice cream is actually rather vanilla tasting, and the candy pieces carry a fruity, almost frosting-like taste to them. This ice cream isn't far from some of those cake batter ice creams that are all of a sudden all the rage, but there's a creamy fruitiness to this that makes it just enough like cotton candy. Since there are actually lots of flavors of cotton candy, it's hard to even say which one this is- it's kind of like a subtle strawberry or cherry mixed with cake. I guess, if I can remember back to the last time I ate cotton candy, this is the standard flavor.

Does this succeed at tasting like cotton candy? Sort of. But I think the fact that it isn't a perfect representation is what makes this actually pretty good. If it had been what I was expecting, it would have had way too much hair.

Is it good? Surprisingly, yes. But if I'm honest, I'm not all that psyched about finishing the carton. For ice cream, I get psyched about vanilla and chocolate mixed with non-fruit candies. This is good, but it's odd, and it may not entirely warrant any servings past this review. 

So I'm gonna give this a C. 

But, none of us are huge cotton candy fans. If you love cotton candy or fruity ice creams, this might just be the miracle you've been waiting for. Snatch some up before this is gone and you have to jam cotton candy you get at a fair into a tub of ice cream just to pretend you tasted it!

-review by Mike