by Andrew H Brown

Created on: April 06, 2007   Last Updated: May 04, 2007

BEN & JERRY'S CARAMEL CHOO-CHOO.

The caramel-flavoured ice cream is a pale golden colour (not unlike ordinary vanilla flavour), with swirls of soft and creamy caramel surrounding lumps of harder caramel which are covered in chocolate. So, that's caramel ice cream with swirls of soft caramel and lumps of hard caramel. If you don't like caramel, probably best to stop reading right now!

The ice cream part is quite delicately flavoured - not too sickly sweet as caramel can sometimes be, although the swirly, soft stuff is just a little cloying. As for the chocolate lumps, well the chocolate is quite crisp and tasty, and it goes really well with the caramel filling.
In fact, the crispy chocolate coating combined with the filling blends beautifully with the gooey swirls, and the whole lot is balanced by the subtler flavour of the ice cream base.
Very nice.

The texture and quality of the ice cream is, as you'd expect from B&J, of the highest order and it's all to easy to scoop out huge dollops of this stuff - but don't worry as it's a whopping 85% fat free! (Just do what I do, and leave about 20% in the bottom of the tub - it's what I call the miracle diet - it'll be a miracle if you lose any weight).
You can find all the nutritional information on the tub so I won't bother here, but suffice to say, it's not health food.

It's available in all the major supermarket chains (and elsewhere), I think we paid around 3.65 in Asda.

In conclusion, I'd recommend B&J's Caramel Choo Choo. It's not too fussy, it's not too sweet and sickly. It's just about right for my sweet tooth needs, and the texture is soft and luxurious enough while still being reasonably firm and chewy too.
It's suitable for vegetarians, but not for nut allergy sufferers. And if you're not a big fan of caramel, you're probably best to avoid it as well.

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