July is National Ice Cream Month, and even more importantly, the third Sunday in July, this year the 16th, is National Ice Cream Day. Unlike the onslaught of hashtag holidays that have taken over the internet via social media sites (I’m lookin’ at you “National Cheese Brownie Day”), this food holiday is a real deal culinary celebration signed into public law by Ronald Reagan in 1984.
As the biggest scoop shop chain in the world, it’s only fitting that Baskin-Robbins take note of this momentous occasion and party hard, which apparently to them means pairing their creamy churned goodness with one of America’s other obsessions – Oreo cookies.
For the last five years BR has made July the month to highlight the iconic cookie with flavors that have gotten progressively more interesting from Oreo ’n Chocolate to Oreo ’n Cake Batter to last year’s smashing Oreo Birthday Cake. With seemingly nowhere else to go, 2017’s celebratory scoop is simply dubbed All About Oreo, which combines fudge-covered, peanut butter, and classic Oreo pieces with an Oreo frosting ribbon in chocolate malt ice cream.
The chocolate malt ice cream is dense and smooth, with a light brown color and a relatively light flavor to match it. I don’t get any of the malty funkiness that I expected from the base, and instead it tastes more like a heavy milk chocolate with no bitterness or strong cocoa notes to be found. It’s a fine ice cream as a foundation for fun mix-ins but isn’t really anything new or exciting.
What is exciting though is the Oreo frosting ribbon, which is pretty well incorporated throughout the scoop and tastes exactly how I hoped it would – slightly gritty, creamy, and identical to the creme filling we all know and love. In the context of ice cream it reminds me a lot of buttercream, and anyway you want to interpret it it’s pure sweet fun indulgence. It works really well with the chocolate ice cream and stands against its milk chocolate-y presence.
The mixture of Oreo cookies is also really effective, and the cookie pieces are of pretty good size and variety. The peanut butter Oreo cuts through with great nutty flavor, and the fudge-covered ones have a harder crunch and smooth milk chocolate exterior that create a pleasant textural contrast against the regular cookies which have softened in the cream. The Oreo wafer is noticeably darker and more bitter than the base which also adds another layer to the choco-heavy profile.
This ice cream truly is all about the Oreo, for reasons both good and bad. While the base is pretty standard and veers on being boring, the cookies are the star of the show and the ribbon is something I would buy a tub of. It could be improved if the regular Oreo’s were subbed out with Golden ones to add another layer of pop, since they aren’t as special with the PB ones already in the mix, but if you love Oreo or milk chocolate this one is a mighty fine filler for your next cake cone.
(Nutrition Facts – 4 ounces – 310 calories, 170 calories from fat, 18 grams of fat, 9 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 40 milligrams of cholesterol, 140 milligrams of sodium, 33 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 25 grams of sugar, and 4 grams of protein.)
Purchased Price: $2.99
Size: Single Scoop (4 oz.)
Rating: 7 out of 10
Pros: Perfectly executed Oreo frosting ribbon. All three cookies stand out. Solid textural contrast.
Cons: No malt flavor in the chocolate base. Could be improved with Golden Oreo.