Monday Munchies – Ben & Jerry’s Gilly’s Catastrophic Crunch

Regular readers here know that if there’s one thing we love at Fission Spaghetti Industries it’s a new flavor from Ben & Jerry.  Ice cream is pretty much a fixture here.  If there’s a new flavor, chances are it’s going to be reviewed here. 

But if there’s something that comes close, it’s the our love for Saturday Night Live.  We’re huge SNL fans.  In fact some of might call us SNL geeks. 

So you can imagine our joy when two of our favorite things combined via Ben & Jerry’s SNL themed flavors.  In honor of SNL’s 40^th anniversary Ben & Jerry’s will be introducing SNL themed flavors throughout the year. 

First up GIlly’s Catastrophic Crunch.

As excited as I was to try out the new flavors, I wasn’t really the biggest fan of Gilly.  Kristen Wiig, like Will Ferrell before her, was incredibly talented, but that often meant sketches that where undercooked because the writers felt their performances.  Many times it felt like the writers came up with half a premise and figured that Wiig would make magic happen.  Of course often that was the case.

Honestly, Gilly’s Catastrophic Crunch feels a similar degree of lack of thought going into it.  Gilly’s Catastrophic Crunch is one of those flavors where it seems like it’s thrown together with whatever Ben & Jerry had excess of. 

It’s chocolate and sweet cream ice creams, with caramel clusters, fudge-covered almonds and a marshmallow swirl.  It sounds like it has potential, right? 

Well, right off the bat, the marshmallow swirl is completely lost, overwhelmed by the chocolate ice cream.  And really, the sweet cream ice cream, while present, is barely noticeable; the chocolate ice cream is just too powerful.  Chocolate is a strong flavor, so in order for a true balance in terms of taste there should be more sweet cream ice cream than chocolate ice cream. 

The caramel clusters and fudge-covered almonds do provide some distraction from all the chocolate.  They both provide a nice degree of texture with the clusters giving some sweetness and the almonds adding a nice crunch. 

Gilly’s Catastrophic Crunch isn’t a bad flavor, it just doesn’t add up to the sum of it’s individual parts.  It you dig chocolate, you’ll dig it.

It should also be noted that Gilly’s Catastrophic Crunch isn’t available at your local grocery store, it’s a Ben & Jerry’s Scoop Shop exclusive flavor.  So, while you can still get a pint to take home with you, it will be more expensive than a pint of Chubby Hubby from Albertsons.