Tag: Dreyer’s/Edy’s

According to Dreyer’s/Edy’s, they invented Rocky Road ice cream and came up with the iconic name in 1929 as something relatable for everyone, given the trying times (it seems worth noting that this claim has been contested by Fentons Ice Creamery in Oakland).

Nearly a century later, they have released The Rocky Road Collection to pay tribute to the original. This collection consists of three popular renditions and three entirely new flavors. As a devotee of bountiful mix-ins, I was excited to get my hands on these new varieties.

Side note: I had never heard of Edy’s before this, so I did some brief research. In the 1920s, ice cream maker William Dreyer and candy maker Joseph Edy joined forces and started making ice cream together. Today, Dreyer’s is sold in the western part of the U.S. and Edy’s in the eastern portion. It’s the ice cream equivalent of Hellmann’s/Best Foods!

All three flavors from this review are available in both the Dreyer’s and Edy’s lines.

On to the ice cream!

Salted Caramel Pretzel Path

Caramel ice cream is the base here. It is mild and sweet, which allows the mix-ins to shine. I don’t pick up any salty notes in the ice cream itself. The chunks of pretzel are covered in chocolate and provide a satisfying crunch, with just a hint of saltiness. They offer a nice textural contrast, but are outshined by the chocolate-covered toffee pieces.

The toffee is rich, buttery, and well-executed. Sometimes it can be a little hard on the teeth when it’s in ice cream, but that’s not the case here. It’s crunchy without being troublesome. Fudge is ribboned throughout the ice cream, remaining a constant sweet presence.

Salted Caramel Pretzel Path works well, but feels slightly boring in comparison to the other flavors. The toffee chunks are the reason to try this one. I appreciate that the ice cream isn’t overly salty, but salted caramel fans may be left wanting more.

Size: 1.5 quart carton
Rating: 7 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (2/3 cup) 210 calories, 10 grams of fat, 7 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 20 milligrams of cholesterol, 120 mg of sodium, 27 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of dietary fiber, 21 grams of sugar, and 3 grams of protein.

Cookie Cobblestone

The chocolate ice cream base is sweet, without being cloying. It has the typical airy Dreyer’s texture, just like all three flavors. Again, this base exists primarily as a delivery vessel for the mix-ins.

The cookie dough chunks are standard fare and bring a chewy, pleasant texture to the fold. There are also chocolate cookie pieces, but these aren’t quite as prevalent. They mostly exist as a fine grain, present in every bite, rather than actual chunks. These provide a nice balancing grit to the rest of the ice cream. Marshmallow swirls act as the glue in this version, lending a typical rocky road familiarity.

Cookie Cobblestone is cohesive and ranks slightly higher than Salted Caramel Pretzel Path. The chocolate ice cream is more well-rounded than the caramel. The mix-ins ratio was good, but more chunks of chocolate cookie pieces would have been even better.

Size: 1.5 quart container
Rating: 8 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (2/3 cup) 220 calories, 9 grams of fat, 5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 20 milligrams of cholesterol, 95 milligrams of sodium, 32 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 22 grams of sugar, and 3 grams of protein.

Brownie Brick Road

I love brownies, so I excitedly dug into this one without examining the components first. I was caught off guard by an inviting crunchy chunk in my first spoonful that exploded with the flavor of brownies. According to the carton, it is crispy brownie edges. These things are the main attraction.

The base of this flavor is a sweet cream ice cream, which is a smart choice. It allows the brownie flavor to be prominently displayed without being overshadowed by more chocolate. The actual brownie chunks are dense, chewy, and satisfying. Brownie batter swirl is incorporated throughout, but I take issue with this aspect. To me, it tastes more like standard chocolate sauce than brownie batter.

Brownie Brick Road is my favorite of the lot, but it could have been improved a little. If the brownie batter swirl had the taste and consistency of actual brownie batter, this would have been a home run. Regardless, this one is worth trying for the crispy brownie edges alone.

Size: 1.5 quart carton
Rating: 9 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (2/3 cup) 230 calories, 11 gram of fat, 6 grams of saturated fat, 25 milligrams of cholesterol, 105 milligrams of sodium, 30 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 24 grams of sugar, and 3 grams of protein.

DISCLOSURE: I received free product samples from Dreyer’s/Edy’s. Doing so did not influence my review.

What is Toy Story 4 Carnival Churro Cravings Ice Cream?

One of two new flavors (Chocolate Peanut Butter Midway Mash-Up is the other) released by Edy’s/Dreyer’s in advance of Toy Story 4, which presumably includes a plot featuring a carnival with a midway and a couple of oh-so-cute stuffed animal prizes featured on the package. According to Wikipedia, my sole source of sometimes accurate information, the two new characters are Ducky and Bunny, voiced by Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele. (Wikipedia didn’t specify which was which, and I didn’t think it would affect how the ice cream tasted, so I moved on).

How is it?

Quite good, especially considering it’s a light ice cream. It has a surprisingly rich and creamy taste and a more complex flavor than your run-of-the-mill cinnamon ice cream. However, I suspect the particular tub I purchased might have been produced when the quality control manager was taking a potty break, as it seemed pretty light on churro pieces and despite some furious digging I could barely locate the graham cracker swirl promised on the label.

Even taking into account that the photo on the package rarely matches what’s inside, the lack of churro and swirl was a minor letdown. But the churro pieces I did manage to find added a nice texture and extra flavor, and there is definitely a hint of graham cracker, so overall this is a winner.

Is there anything else you need to know?

The movie is not set to be released until June 21, so this product debut seems a bit premature. The good news is that it should be available at least through the end of summer. Also, I learned from the package that it’s “Great for birthdays!” Wow, thanks for the tip, otherwise I might have picked up some frozen broccoli for my next birthday blowout.

Conclusion:

Even with a possible churro and graham cracker swirl shortage, this ranks high for me as a solid choice. And bonus points for it being a light ice cream with 1/2 the fat and 1/3 fewer calories than regular ice cream. I was never good at fractions, but I think that means you can eat ten times as much.

I’m also tempted to sneak this into a movie theater this summer, especially since my local megaplex also serves warm churros, and that would make an incredible, albeit messy and probably short-lived, utensil to deliver the ice cream to my hungry mouth.

Purchased Price: $3.98
Size: 1.5 quarts
Purchased at: H-E-B
Rating: 8 out of 10 (possibly higher with some more freakin’ graham cracker swirl)
Nutrition Facts: (2/3 cup serving) 160 calories, 4.5 grams of fat, 2.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 10 milligrams of cholesterol, 75 milligrams of sodium, 26 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fiber, 18 grams of sugar, and 3 grams of protein.

Remember when ordering “Superman” ice cream meant that you were:

1) Between the ages of four and ten years old.
2) Going to get a scoop of generic red/blue/yellow ice cream that tasted like tooty-fruity vanilla?

Those days are long over! Since America’s officially comic book crazy right now, you can get your hands on superhero-themed anything — shirts, binders, socks, gummies. Just name it! Up until now, though, there hasn’t been an officially licensed superhero-themed ice cream.

Rising to duty’s call, Edy’s/Dreyer’s has partnered with DC Comics to come up with not one, not two, but THREE official DC-inspired ice creams, just in time to save civilians everywhere from the sweltering summer heat!

Edy’s/Dreyer’s decided to represent DC Comics’s three most iconic superheroes with their light ice cream offerings: Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. Aquaman, being the least popular of the Super Friends, wasn’t good enough to make the cut, I suppose. In any case, I decided to try all three flavors.

Krypton Cookie Dough

After removing the lid from this Superman-inspired ice cream, I realized that this is a far cry from the Superman ice cream that I remember eating as a kid. Instead of using an eye-catching rainbow swirl, Edy’s/Dreyer’s went in the exact opposite direction by making this quart a single boring shade of vanilla, with a few pale chunks to break up the monotony.

What’s the deal with everyone being so scared of color? It seems like everything that I’ve bought lately has just had the color bleached out of it. Would putting a little more dye into the mix-ins really cost Edy’s/Dreyer’s that much more money?

The taste of this stuff is about as plain as it looks. Unlike its tooty-fruity step-brother, this Superman ice cream is the kind of vanilla that only works well as a canvas for crazy swirls and jam-packed mix-ins. The problem is, this flavor doesn’t have either of those things. The blue sprinkles don’t taste any different from the ice cream’s base, and the red and yellow cookie dough pieces are so sparse that I only found three of them in my entire bowl.

Rating: 4 out of 10
Nutrition Facts (1/2 cup): 120 calories, 3 grams of fat, 2 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 10 milligrams of cholesterol, 50 milligrams of sodium, 20 grams of total carbohydrates, 0 grams of dietary fiber, 14 grams of sugar, 2 grams of protein)

Dark Knight Brownie Bite

I gotta say that this Batman-inspired flavor surprised me. Upon first glance, it may not be the prettiest ice cream ever, but it more than makes up for its lack of visual appeal in taste.

Digging in, it’s got that soft, whipped texture that pretty much all light ice creams have, and it actually works pretty well here. It keeps the chocolate from being too dense and heavy, and the overall effect makes the ice cream feel like a sort of frozen chocolate mousse or something. The downside to that is that the ice cream melts pretty fast, but I found myself not really minding too much.

Edy’s/Dreyer’s decided to get creative with the chunks in this flavor by shaping them into miniature bats. They’re cute, and they give a nice crunch to the base. There still aren’t nearly enough brownie pieces, but the ones that I could find were pretty yummy, and they reminded me of frozen Cosmic Brownies. The fudge swirl is nearly absent, but I found that the brownie chunks and the chocolate bats were enough to keep my taste buds entertained.

Rating: 6 out of 10
Nutrition Facts (1/2 cup): 130 calories, 3.5 grams of total fat, 2.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 5 milligrams of cholesterol, 45 milligrams of sodium, 22 grams of total carbohydrates, 1 gram of dietary fiber, 17 grams of sugar, 3 grams of protein)

Golden Lasso Twirl

Last up is an ice cream designed for the ladies!

Honestly, this one doesn’t look too different from Krypton Cookie Dough. The base is a little tanner, and the chunks changed color from blue to gold, but that’s about it. Chowing down, it doesn’t really even taste much different from Krypton Cookie Dough, either. The ice cream is almost identical, using the same plain ol’ vanilla to showcase the mix-ins and swirl.

Most of the caramel flavor comes from the chunks. There’s plenty of chunks to go around here, but I don’t think that they’re enough to carry the caramel flavor by themselves. The graham cracker “swirl” is similarly plentiful and tasty, but I don’t know that I’d really call it a swirl. In my opinion, swirls are supposed to be somewhere in-between gooey and semisolid, and these are definitely solid graham cracker pieces.

I’m a sucker for anything with graham crackers, so this was probably my favorite of the three, and I wouldn’t mind buying this flavor again. Next time, I’ll just make sure to buy extra caramel sauce to put on top.

Rating: 7 out of 10
Nutrition Facts (1/2 cup): 130 calories, 4.5 grams of total fat, 3 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 5 milligrams of cholesterol, 50 milligrams of sodium, 20 grams of total carbohydrates, 0 grams of dietary fiber, 15 grams of sugar, 2 grams of protein)

Overall, I feel that all three DC-inspired ice creams were pretty standard for something that would come from Edy’s/Dreyer’s light offerings. No single flavor was spectacular, and all of them had points that they could improve on, but the packaging on them is fun, and any of the flavors would make for a cheap and yummy way to cool off on a hot day. Besides, what kid wouldn’t love getting to eat superhero-themed ice cream?

Now, if only Marvel would team up with Breyer’s to make Avenger-inspired flavors!

Purchased Price: $3.00 (on sale)
Size: 1.5 quarts
Purchased at: Kroger
Pros: Super-fun art on the carton. Cheap and yummy way to cool off on a hot day. Fun mix-ins. Official, licensed, superhero-inspired flavors.
Cons: Not as visually appealing as generic “Superman” ice cream. Not enough mix-ins overall. Missing swirls. Nothing all that unique taste-wise from Edy’s/Dreyer’s other light ice cream offerings.

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.