Monday, July 23, 2012

BRAND SPANKIN’ NEW SERIES OF REVIEWS! I Start Reviewing Ice Cream With Starbuck’s Signature Hot Chocolate Ice Cream!


The Good: Delicious, Not entirely un-nutritious
The Bad: A little fattier and more expensive than ideal.
The Basics: I open my reviews of ice cream with the Starbucks Coffee Signature Hot Chocolate Ice Cream, which very truly creates a hot cocoa flavor in ice cream form!


Back when I used to write reviews for a website, I tended to write reviews of items no one else would. The attitude many reviewers had in discussions on the message boards on that site had was that those reviews would never make money and therefore no one should bother writing reviews of little things or obscure items. Now that I write the reviews on my own and for my own enjoyment (though I do rely upon ad revenue to actually continue writing reviews, so please do click through the ads and buy things occasionally if you actually enjoy the quality of the reviews!), I occasionally find myself wanting to review something for which there is little direct economic benefit to writing a review for.

With that, I open my reviews of ice cream. Yes, I am now going to review ice cream because I absolutely love ice cream. Do I think a lot of people buy ice cream online? No. But, do I think that readers might enjoy thoughts on ice cream and potentially enjoy getting tips on which ice creams are worth picking up vs. passing by? Absolutely. So, while there might not be a lot of money in writing reviews of ice cream, I am eager to share thoughts on ice creams I am trying this summer (and from now on). I hope you enjoy them.

Thus, I begin with Starbucks Coffee’s Signature Hot Chocolate Ice Cream!

Basics

Trading on the name of Starbucks Coffee, Starbucks now makes ice cream. Like Ben & Jerry’s and Hagen Das, Starbucks Coffee ice cream comes in smaller batches, one pint containers. The Signature Hot Chocolate Ice Cream is a smooth ice cream with chocolate and vanilla ice cream swirled together with a fudge ripple. The flavors in the ice cream blend together nicely on the tongue to perfectly embody the flavor of a proper, simple milk chocolate hot cocoa.

At (locally) $4.19 a pint, the Starbuck’s Coffee ice cream is pricier than the common ice creams, but on par with Ben & Jerry’s and still less expensive than the average Hagen Das. I was thrilled to find my pint on clearance for half price and I am baffled as to why it was there!

Ease Of Preparation

The Signature Hot Chocolate Ice Cream is a very simple ice cream. As an ice cream, preparation is ridiculously simple: one need only open the top of the container, scoop out a half cup and consume! There is no trick to preparing or eating the Signature Hot Chocolate Ice Cream.

Taste

The Signature Hot Chocolate Ice Cream smells distinctly like dark chocolate, which makes this ice cream very inviting. As expected, ice cream does not have a particularly powerful aroma to it.

Initially on the tongue, the Hot Chocolate ice cream presents a delightfully dark flavor to it. The vanilla swirls mix in the mouth to create a flavor that comes to embody the actual flavor of milk chocolate hot cocoa. The flavor of most cocoas is slightly muted and the Hot Chocolate ice cream has that muted flavor to it, but it is saved from being unremarkably by the fudge swirl that is present throughout the blend. The fudge swirl also robs the vanilla flavor from ever truly asserting itself (I picked into the vanilla and on its own, it is present as a milky and muted flavor). The Hot Chocolate ice cream is very much a chocolate ice cream and the fudge ripple in it keeps in more lively than the standard chocolate ice cream. Even with the bites that have the highest proportion of vanilla in the blend, this remains a very chocolately ice cream.

Given how strong the chocolate flavor to this ice cream is, there is a slightly dry aftertaste that lingers after the ice cream is consumed.

Nutrition

The Starbucks Signature Hot Chocolate Ice Cream is a very rich ice cream and the pint represents four half-cup servings. In the half-cup serving, there are 230 calories, 120 of which are from fat. The thirteen grams of fat represent 20% of the RDA of fat, with 40% of one’s RDA of saturated fat coming in the 8 grams of saturated fat in this ice cream. One serving has 50 mg of cholesterol (that’s 17% of the RDA!), but only 60 mg of Sodium (2% RDA). As one looking out for my heart health, I was thrilled by the fact that there was a gram of dietary fiber and three grams of protein. There is also 10% of the RDA of Calcium and Vitamin A in the Hot Chocolate Ice Cream.

Starbucks seems to justify the expense of its ice cream by having good ingredients and the fact that Cream, Skim Milk, and Water are the primary ingredients is nice. There is nothing unpronounceable in the ingredients list and while there is no coffee in the ice cream, this ice cream does have caffeine.

Storage/Clean-Up

Starbucks Coffee ice cream is both a frozen and a dairy product, so it is pretty obvious that it must be kept frozen in order to remain viable. Kept frozen it remains fresh for months (my pint had an expiration date of December 19, 2012, which made it even more baffling why it would be clearanced now).

The Hot Chocolate ice cream is appropriately dark and when it melts and gets onto fabrics, it will require one to wash it right out. On nonporous surfaces, the ice cream wipes off exceptionally easily.

Overall

The Starbucks Coffee Signature Hot Chocolate ice cream may be coffee free, but it is not flavor free. In fact, Starbucks manages to perfectly recreate the flavor of hot cocoa in ice cream form and despite the nutrition and expense detractions, this makes for a delightful treat!

For other chocolate or hot cocoa reviews, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Ghirardelli 60% Cacao Chocolate Squares
Swiss Miss No Sugar Added Hot Cocoa
Russell Stover Triple Chocolate Mousse Private Reserve Bars

7/10

For other food reviews, please visit my Food Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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