Light ice cream. Some people shiver and cringe at the very notion. Some people praise it and buy it all the time. Me? I’m somewhere in the middle.
Light ice cream takes up that middle space in between Halo Top and super premium pints or trips to the scoop shop. I appreciate it for what it is, go in with real expectations, and enjoy.
I don’t follow too closely to what Dreyer’s Slow Churned line is up to, but when they announced a Peanut Butter Cookie Dough flavor that would clock in at 120 calories and only four grams of fat per serving I was intrigued and had to put my PB-expertise to the test. The limited edition Nestle Toll House-branded flavor combines sweet cream light ice cream with peanut butter cookie dough pieces and a peanut butter swirl.
The sweet cream ice cream base is generally unremarkable. It’s soft and creamy with a blanketed nondescript sweetness that acts much more as a texture than a flavor. No buttery notes, vanilla, or rich cream flavor can be found, but for a light ice cream it definitely holds its end of the bargain being a smooth and melty backdrop to the container’s mix-ins.
Fortunately for the ice cream, it doesn’t need to work too hard because there is more peanut butter swirl than I expected and the nut butter fiend in me is definitely satisfied. Although the ribbons themselves are thin, there is a solid amount of peanut butter laced throughout every bite, occasionally even coming across a massive hardened chunk of PB that explodes with salty smoothness.
The peanut butter itself is sweet and creamy, much like JIF or Skippy, and combines really well with the sweet cream to create a fluffy peanut-y experience that is much better than what I anticipated from a Slow Churned product.
The biggest issue with this flavor, unsurprisingly, is the cookie dough itself. While the taste of the dough is actually pretty good, with a unique deep fatty roasted peanut flavor and solid dough grittiness, there isn’t nearly enough of it and the pieces are quite small. Throughout the course of eating around a half of the container and digging around to try and find more, I came across less than 15 pieces of dough, which hardly lives up to its prominent placement in the flavor’s title.
Due to the low calorie count of the Slow Churned line I kind of expected this since the description and macros just seemed too good to be true. If they had to sacrifice somewhere the dough makes the most sense because if they had pulled back on the peanut butter swirl itself the flavor wouldn’t have come together at all.
(Nutrition Facts – 1/2 cup (63g) – 120 calories, 35 calories from fat, 4 grams of fat, 1.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 5 milligrams of cholesterol, 55 milligrams of sodium, 18 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fiber, 13 grams of sugar, and 3 grams of protein.)
Purchased Price: $4.99
Size: 1.5 qts.
Purchased at: Safeway
Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: Surprising amount of peanut butter swirl for a light ice cream. Fluffy creamy base. tasty nutty robust dough pieces. Solid nutritional tradeoff.
Cons: Not enough cookie dough pieces. Very basic nondescript sweet flavor in the ice cream base.