As the vegan in our group of writers, I was assigned the dreaded task of trying all the new non-dairy Ben and Jerry’s flavors. While it was a great excuse to eat more ice cream than I should have, it didn’t make my bank account so happy. At Stop and Shop, the non-dairy flavors are $5.99 each and don’t go on sale when the original flavors do. Unfortunately, my overall impression of the taste wasn’t much better either. I was disappointed to find that the flavors are decent, but nothing special.
My favorite by far and the one I would recommend is P.B. & Cookies, I suppose because you can’t really screw up peanut butter and oreos. I was pleasantly surprised to see that there were lots of big oreo chunks and creamy swirls of peanut butter, so it was a win in my book.
My biggest let down was Chocolate Fudge Brownie, since I’m a chocoholic and was excited about the vegan brownie chunks. While the brownies were good and abundant, the chocolate ice cream tasted too sweetly of the almond milk and I really didn’t enjoy it.
Chunky Monkey was another big disappointment as the bananas had a severely artificial flavor, like a banana-flavored candy would have. There were also scarce walnuts and fudge chunks, so the base was overwhelming and the ice cream overall a boring combination.
Lastly, Coffee Caramel Fudge was okay, but not good enough for it to be worth the amount of sugar, fat, and calories. However, I would recommend using this to make some sort of boozy milkshake, with rum, for example, as the caramel tones did have a bit of an alcoholic taste.
Sorry B&J fans, seems to me like the new dairy-free line was a big fail, but definitely a step in the right direction! You can head to Pinterest to find easy ways to make your own dairy-free ice cream, with frozen bananas and coconut milk, and top it with crumbled cookies, melted peanut butter, or chocolate chips!