Chunky, creamy, chocolate to die for (Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey)

Member Name: JonnyM79

Product:	Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey
Date:	08/04/02 (185 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Creamy, Looks great, Rich chocolate

Disadvantages: Walnuts

Chunky Monkey is an odd title by anyone's standards, but given that this is a Ben and Jerry's flavour its only what we expect. The flavour consists of banana ice cream with walnuts and dark chocolate peices. I can understand the monkey theme with the banana and walnuts, but what monkeys have to do with chocolate I'm not quite sure.

This ice-cream has a lot going for it visually. The banana flavour is a bright yellow and this contrasts with the chocolate which is a deep dark brown. It really gets you drooling just looking at an open carton. When you actually get round to eating it the flavour is also a pleasant surprise. Banana is always a hard flavour to do well without it tasting artificial, but B&J pull it off here, and it's allied to the smooth and creamy texture that you find throughout their range. The real strength of the ice-cream is the chocolate chunks. We're not talking the normal cheap and nasty chocolate added to ice-creams. It's very dark, with a deep rich flavour similar to high cocoa low sugar luxary chocolates such as you normally buy as an import from Switzerland, in a generously sized (I.E. mouthful) chunk. In fact if they released the chocolate in this ice-cream as a bar I reckon it would sell bucketloads: I'd certainly buy it.

The one slight disappointment is the walnuts. I've never been that much of a fan of nuts in ice-cream since unlike most additions they're totally solid and therefore don't melt into or blend with the ice-cream they're part of. The walnuts here are just too bland and you actually resent the space they take up: it could have been filled with chocolate! A shame because it just prevents this otherwise outstanding ice-cream from getting 5 stars. Don't be too put off though, it's still definitely worth investigation.

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