Banana splits are one of those treats I love but I rarely ever seem to actually eat.
I don't know why. No actually, I pretty much do. The vast majority of the ice cream that I eat is had at home and to be perfectly honest I next to never go through more effort then pulling the lid off the pint to eat it. Let's face it banana splits require a decent amount of prep- and ingredients I don't tend to have on hand.
So, when I got my latest craving for one I took advantage of the fact that both Ben & Jerry's and Haagen-Dazs now both offer banana split pints. What made me choose the Haagen-Dazs over the Ben & Jerry's was the fact that they're version contains walnuts and I HATE walnuts- I am however hoping Jim from Jim's Chocolate Mission will chime in with his opinion on the Ben & Jerry's version if he has tried it.
Now, the Haagen-Daz version is a base flavor that is a blend of banana flavored ice cream and whipped cream flavored ice cream. then there is a fudge swirl and pieces of strawberry and cherry.
I think the mixing of the two base flavors was perfect. The whipped cream keeps the banana from tasting too artificial and after all what is a banana split without whipped cream?
The strawberries and the cherries are both plump and sweet. There is also a generous amount of chocolate. Now I know that Haagen-Dazs called it a "fudge swirl" but if you ask me it is more like Hershey's syrup then say traditional hot fudge. Not bad but not fudge.
It's good! I ended up really liking it... I liked it enough that now I want to brave the walnuts in the Ben & Jerry's version to do a comparison- so stayed tuned!!
:O :O I cant believe you hate Walnuts they are a god send if they are nice and fresh! Granted If they arent they can be rather bland and disgustingly soft in texture!
ReplyDelete"Chunky Monkey" is the Ben & Jerries version of this ice cream and although its not my faves its still pretty good! im not a massive bannana fan....actually scrap that I really dont like banana at all (apart from when its the dried stuff!) so I really cant comment on it too much as I dont choose it very often! Still though From what I hear though for bannana lovers the Chunky Monkey is pretty hard to beat!!
Jim
Jim,
ReplyDeleteI will send you my walnuts! blah!!
Now, with that said there is a Chinese restaurant near me that does a shrimp and walnut dish with these toasted walnuts that have sort of a sweet glaze on them. I would do bad things for those walnuts- so maybe there is hope for me.
Here in the US we have both the Chunky Monkey flavor and a newish (the last year or so) separate flavor called Banana Split.
Having never tried either of them (again those pesky walnuts) as best I can tell the only major differences between them is that the Banana Splits base ice cream is a combination of strawberry and banana ice creams (rather then just banana as in Chunky Monkey) and it has an added fudge swirl.
What I wanna know Jim is how you don't like banana!!
Gi - im getting more and more acustom to banana...give me a chance ;)
ReplyDeleteas for you Yanks getting way too many flavour of B&Js compared to us Brits it just simply isnt fair :( :( what do we ever do to deserve just a limited range...no one in my business will answer me that :(