Ben & Jerry's The Tonight Dough Ice Cream

[By Nick, New for Feb 2015] Last night on The Tonight Show, Ben & Jerry's revealed the followup to Jimmy Fallon's Late Night Snack.

Ben & Jerry's The Tonight Dough Starring Jimmy Fallon

Caramel & Chocolate Ice Creams with Chocolate Cookie Swirls 

& Gobs of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough & Peanut Butter Cookie Dough

If you follow me on twitter or instagram, you'd know I managed to get my hands on a pint a little early courtesy of the Niskayuna Co-op. You would also know that I go to The College of Saint Rose which is Jimmy's Alma Matter. So it seems fitting that I'm the one who gets to review his new flavor. Hey, maybe if this review goes viral, Jimmy will let me appear on a show in the near future ;)

When we first got news about this flavor, my emotions were split. While I love the mix-ins they decided to go with, you all know how I feel about those two bases. The main reason I'm disappointed is that Jimmy's old flavor had a vanilla bean base which was way better than most of Ben & Jerry's other bases, but now it resides in the flavor graveyard since no other Ben & Jerry's flavor utilizes it anymore. That said, you can judge a book by its cover. I need to give this flavor it's audition and see if it's primetime material. (yeah, that just happened. Deal with it. )

Well, that's disappointing to say the least. 

Let's dig down and see if we can get a better look at things. 

Err, things aren't much better. The chocolate cookie swirls are in full effect but there doesn't seem to be much action from the dough going on. That and look how much of the chocolate base there is. It's easily a 80/20 split if not greater of chocolate to caramel.

That's reflected in the taste because I can't taste caramel at all in the pint. The chocolate just dominates it and the caramel was doomed from the start. The chocolate is how it always is bland and boring. There's really not much to say about it I haven't said before. Thankfully there's a bunch of mix-ins to make up for it.

Ben & Jerry's chocolate cookie swirl is one of my favorite swirls of all time. It's essentially a swirl of oreo type cookie wafers and it's delicious. It gives more of a depth to the chocolate base and almost a chocolate cookies and cream feel going on.

While the cookie dough isn't in high volume, it does make itself known. Well the peanut butter cookie dough does at least. The normal chocolate chip cookie dough just gets downed out by the base. I could feel it's gritty texture but I didn't get any flavor. The combination of the chocolate base and peanut butter cookie dough worked well in PB Half Baked and it's the same here. The peanut butter really shines through and makes that addicting classic combination.

Okay, I hope all of that made sense. I made it sound like this ice cream is bad but that's far from the case. It's a good flavor and I'd say it's in my Top 20 from B&J's. The problem is, it had so much potential. They just really failed to deliver when it came to base choice. If they went with a combo of vanilla and peanut butter, I could see this being a hit. As is, it reminds me of Chocolate Therapy with cookie dough thrown in. I'm sorry Jimmy, but you deserve better.

Dubba's Thoughts: I was hoping Nick was being overly critical this one, but as is usually the case, I agree that this is an underwhelming ice cream. It's not as unique as Late Night Snack nor is it as epic as Milk & Cookies. Everything just feels lost here. They're trying to do too much in a small space. My biggest disappointment was a lack of my beloved chocolate cookie swirl. Uggg, pick a direction and go with it, no more of this multifaceted nonsense. "Let's just throw everything together and hope for the best" is not how you come up with new flavors. Sorry, now I'm just getting cranky.

Verdict?  Don't get your hopes up
Buy Again?  Not any time soon