When it comes to a pint of ice cream, I want one thing: chunks. It doesn’t matter what kind—pretzel, cake, pie crust, or fudge. I want them all. The chunkier the better when it comes to my frozen desserts. And when we’re talking chunks, Ben & Jerry’s is one of the chunkiest brands in the biz. But when I sink my teeth into a bite of B&J’s, I find myself asking: What if it was all chunks?
I understand that the true ice cream lover might find this unfavorable (or even infuriating). I, however, am an ice cream liker. A temporary tourist in the world of ice cream. A fan of the cool, creaminess, but also someone who gets bored of bite after bite of smoothness. I know that there are others who feel the same out there and a product needs to be made for us.
Those who live for mix-ins know you’re lucky if you get 20% stuff and 80% ice cream in a pint. I’m proposing we turn ice cream on its head and transition to a ratio in which the amount of mix-ins far exceeds the amount of actual ice cream. Instead of the focus being on the smooth, milky base, we’ll place a much greater emphasis on everything else. Everything that keeps the ice cream from being a bowl of frozen milk. Think of the ice cream as a light blanket gently swaddling all the delicious pieces of candy and cookie and nuts.
If you still can’t envision what I’m pitching, here are five new, mix-in forward flavors I think would be delicious. And if anyone at the Ben & Jerry’s corporation happens to be reading this, please email me.
- Chess Match
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Credit: Ryan Martin / iStock An entire slice of chocolate chess pie, still intact, would sit in the center of the container. Filling the extra space would be sweet cream ice cream with milk chocolate flakes. This would be full-on pie a la mode in pint form.
- The King’s Cake
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Credit: Ryan Martin / iStock Thick slices of king cake, a cinnamon bun-esque bread, would line the top, bottom, and sides of the vessel. In the center, cinnamon sugar ice cream would be swirled together with cream cheese frosting. 50% ice cream, 50% frosting. The core of the pint would be filled with purple, green, and gold sprinkles. As someone who spent a large portion of their growing up years in New Orleans, I am certain people would buy this seasonal, Mardi Gras flavor.
- Hot As Lava
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Credit: Ryan Martin / iStock I’m not a food scientist so I don’t have the logistics figured out, but I want to put a bunch of mini chocolate lava cakes with liquid chocolate centers in ice cream. I’m talking hundreds of little chocolate pouches filled with dreamy melted chocolate, lightly enrobed by vanilla bean ice cream.
- Cookies & Milk
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Credit: Ryan Martin / iStock I am aware that Ben & Jerry’s already has Milk & Cookies, a vanilla ice cream containing pieces of assorted cookies. While I like this concept, I am more interested in a product that puts cookies first. The carton would be filled with whole chocolate chip cookies (think Pringles in their can). Milk chocolate ice cream would fill in the cracks. When you’re actually eating cookies with milk, you want more cookies than milk, right?
- Un-Fudging-Believable
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Credit: Ryan Martin / iStock Is it ice cream? Is it fudge? It’s both (but mostly fudge)! The tub would be 90% chocolate walnut fudge and 10% white chocolate ice cream. This would be the perfect example of a basically no-ice-cream-ice-cream ideology.
