If you happen to be standing in front of the freezers at your local Safeway, see Ben & Jerry’s new Topped Dirt Cake and Topped Chocolate Milk & Cookies, and wonder which one you should get because you don’t want to buy both since a pint costs (checks receipt) $6.49 on sale, reach for the Dirt Cake.
Or wait for a better sale.
Dirt Cake features vanilla pudding ice cream with chocolate sandwich cookies and chocolate cookie swirls topped with milk chocolatey ganache and chocolate cookie crumbles.
To be honest, I kind of rolled my eyes at “vanilla pudding ice cream” because there are so many vanilla ice cream variations, and here we have one more. Does it taste like vanilla pudding? To be honest, it’s hard to isolate a decent spoonful of the base itself because there’s A LOT of chocolatey treasure within it. But from what my taste buds can pick out, I don’t recognize it as vanilla pudding, but it’s definitely a different shade of vanilla.
While I love the flavors from this pint, the most exciting part is the chocolate cookie crumble topping, but mainly because of its crunchiness and less so for its dark, slightly bitter Oreo-like chocolate flavor. The crumbles look, crunch, and can make a mess like dirt.
What? Noooo, I’ve never eaten dirt. What are you suggesting? I’m just relaying what I was told by, uh, my classmate in the third grade whose name I don’t remember, so you can’t ask him.
I also enjoy the dirt-like topping because it can be scraped down into the lower levels of the pint. With other Topped varieties, the ganache and whatever was on top of that would fuse, making it so that it couldn’t be experienced deeper into the pint. Being able to spread that crunch helps compensate for the not crunchy but tasty sandwich cookie chunks in the base. Overall, the pint was successful at reminding me of Dirt Cake, minus the gummy worms.
I thought about purchasing gummy worms, which would’ve completed the whole Dirt Cake experience, but I didn’t want to taint my opinion of the pint by adding some fruitiness and a texture that’s not even close to being like a real worm.
What? Noooo, I’ve never eaten actual worms. What are you even suggesting? I’m just sharing what, um, some kid who lived down the street from me when I was growing up said. And that person doesn’t live there anymore, so you can’t ask him.
As for Chocolate Milk & Cookies, it has chocolate ice cream with chocolate chip cookies and chocolate cookie swirls topped with milk chocolatey ganache and fudge chips.
I don’t know if being eaten after the wonderful Dirt Cake is responsible for my feelings about Chocolate Milk & Cookies, but it wasn’t as compelling. There’s nothing about it I can ramble about, like Dirt Cake’s cookie crumbles.
As you can probably guess by reading its description, it’s choco-heavy. But perhaps it’s TOO choco-heavy. Because there are so many choco-mponents, the cookies buried in the pint don’t stand out at all. But it doesn’t taste like straight-up chocolate ice cream because the base, swirls, ganache, and fudge chips bring their own chocolatey nuances and textures. So I guess it’s not one-note, but more like one-and-a-half-note.
Ben & Jerry’s Topped Chocolate Milk & Cookies a fine ice cream, but again, I’d easily pick Dirt Cake over it.
Purchased Price: $6.49* each
Size: 15.2 fl oz
Purchased at: Safeway
Rating: 8 out of 10 (Dirt Cake), 6 out of 10 (Chocolate Milk & Cookies)
Nutrition Facts: (2/3 cup) Dirt Cake 430 calories, 24 grams of fat, 11 grams of saturated fat, 0.5 grams of trans fat, 55 milligrams of cholesterol, 190 milligrams of sodium, 49 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 38 grams of sugar (33 grams of added sugar), and 6 grams of protein. Chocolate Milk & Cookies – 430 calories, 27 grams of fat, 13 grams of saturated fat, 0.5 grams of trans fat, 50 milligrams of cholesterol, 135 milligrams of sodium, 45 grams of carbohydrates, 3 grams of fiber, 37 grams of sugar (31 grams of added sugar), and 6 grams of protein.
*Because I live on a rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, things are a bit pricier here. You’ll probably pay less than I did.