I’m 10 percent sure Dairy Queen Caramel Java Chip Blizzard has no caffeine. But I’m 100 percent sure it has coffee, choco-espresso crunch pieces, and caramel topping blended with soft serve because I copied and pasted most of this sentence from the Dairy Queen app. Looking through the ingredients of the dessert that I’m 10 percent sure children should eat, I noticed instant coffee and coffee concentrate. Okay, I’m eight percent sure now.
As you can guess from the photo above, my Blizzard was not served upside down. But it didn’t help that I took a short outdoor walk from the Dairy Queen to someplace with enough light to take decent photos, which ended up being the sitting area of a Starbucks inside a Target. The heat and humidity probably caused more melting. (Yes, I bought something from the Starbucks.)
But sitting next to those baristas was helpful because doing so made me realize that I probably got more coffee flavor in my mouth by breathing in the air at a Starbucks inside a Target than I did from the Caramel Java Chip Blizzard.
Those choco-espresso crunch pieces aren’t chocolate-covered espresso beans. Instead, they’re coffee-flavored rice crisps in a chocolatey coating, and the way they crunch reminds me more of Buncha Crunch candy than cocoa-coated espresso beans. Mine had a lot of them, enough that every spoonful had one. But the java flavor isn’t robust even with so many of them. With the first few spoonfuls, I could notice it, but at some point, that faded, and I mostly tasted the coating with a slight dark chocolate bitterness.
Much like the choco-espresso crunch pieces, the caramel topping mixed with the soft serve makes itself known with every spoonful, and I wonder if its buttery sweetness contributed to the lack of java flavor. Also, I didn’t taste any coffee when eating the caramel-enhanced soft serve on its own. However, the chocolate and caramel combination is good, and the crispy crunch from those chocolatey pieces is delightful.
Despite eating a small order, I still don’t know if Dairy Queen’s Caramel Java Chip Blizzard contains caffeine. However, ordering and drinking a Starbucks cold brew while eating the Blizzard and writing this review probably prevented me from finding out. But what I do know is that this needs more coffee flavor. It’s so weak that I could convince the Starbucks baristas in front of me that this is a Choco Caramel Blizzard.
Purchased Price: $6.89*
Size: Small
Rating: 6 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: 630 calories, 22 grams of fat, 16 grams of saturated fat, 0.5 grams of trans fat, 50 milligrams of cholesterol, 260 milligrams of sodium, 95 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 76 grams of sugar, and 13 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.
