Flavor review: Ben&Jerry's Volun-Tiramisu

As is the basis of this blog, I furthered my quest for gourmet ice creams with a recent flavor from Ben&Jerry's, and who better to look with than with two of my best friends. I scour all types and brands of ice cream on my quest, so I often indulge in these pints a few times a week. Actually, it's not really an indulgence since it is such a frequent occurrence.

Volun-Tiramisu - coffee mascarpone ice cream with cocoa dusted coffee rum lady finger pieces.

First let me clarify a few of these scary foreign terms. Tiramisu is an Italian dessert made from lady fingers (light and sweet sponge cake) dunked in coffee, layered with a whipped cream made from egg yolks and mascarpone (an Italian triple-cream cheese), and flavored/dusted with liquor and cocoa. So, from the description it seems Ben and Jerry recreated the dessert exactly, only in ice cream form. Ben&Jerry's teamed up with Target, and released Volun-Tiramisu as a part of a four-flavor line up supporting Volunteerism, hence its name, Volunteerimisu.

This was one of the creamiest flavors I've had by Ben&Jerry's; it resembled Chunky Monkey in texture, very creamy, but a tad foamy, which is something I have not encountered in a B&J flavor thus far. That characteristic is never associated with great ice creams, just those big-5 gallon-plastic-tubs of ice cream, whose brands you don't even recognize, found piled in Wal-Marts. And it should stay there, in its frozen grave until it happens to be picked up by an unfortunately ill-learned couple seeking a frozen treat for the night, thinking they're getting a steal because it is a third of the price of one pint of B&J. As I was saying, it's not a desirable trait to have in your ice cream.

The ice cream base was a mild coffee flavor, much like an iced coffee would taste from Starbucks. It did not resemble their other coffee flavors, Dublin Mudslide and Bonaroo Buzz, which have a coffee density strong enough to keep you up at night. This was a soft coffee flavor, so as not to overtake the flavorful add-ins. The coffee flavor was descaled by the mascarpone. I think the mascarpone was the element that fostered such creaminess, though I could not taste it in particular against the other elements. In an ice cream of my own I would not decrease the coffee flavor. I like the flavor the other two held, but this one tasted "cheap",  even though it provided a subtle background for the lady fingers.

The lady fingers were, in a word, dense. They typified what I think of when I hear sponge cake, though it does not compete with Twinkie-like sponginess. It mimicked the texture of a normal white cake, but resembled the taste of a pound cake. They were coated in cocoa, not only to replicate the actual dessert, but to prevent them from becoming soggy masses suspended in rich ice cream, thus ruining the entire experience, for this is the way with bread-based add-ins. Well thought out B&J team. I liked the lady fingers in the ice cream, though I've had nothing in an ice cream like them before, nor am I a big fan of cake in general, and I could not taste the rum mentioned in the description. These were a new experience, and that is what I am looking for: new things to broaden my frozen horizons, and to find what accents create gourmet ice cream.

I stated that B&J replicated the dessert well, but not the right way. Gourmet ice cream truly replicates a dessert by recreating that dessert in ice cream form, not just throwing bits of the actual dessert into ice cream. Anyone can do that. Want carrot cake ice cream? Throw pieces of carrot cake into vanilla or cinnamon ice cream. Wrong. For Tiramisu, I would have stuck with the coffee ice cream, making it a tad more pungent and combined it with a rich chocolate, but I wouldn't have put any cake pieces in. Instead, I would have made a creamy, breaded swirl out of mascarpone and lady fingers. This would have truly recreated the dessert in frozen form. "Don't get cheap on me, Dodgson."

That's all there is to this one. This flavor was basic compared to most of their wacky concoctions. I will be reviewing more flavors in the future, and giving my $0.02 worth. If you want to know how one tastes before you buy it, then ask me, and if I haven't had it already, then I will buy it, eat it, review it, and then you'll know everything you want to know about it, and probably a little more than you wanted to know.

Ben&Jerry's cow says: "Volunteers rock."

(Yes, I finished it, all 920 calories of it. This is mid-process. Look at the extreme creaminess. This is a characteristic sought far and wide for by many a ice cream maker)

-Reese O'Shirey Esq.