Ben & Jerry's Red Velvet Cake

Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream is known for their unique flavors. Whereas some ice creams would have a vanilla flavored ice cream with peanut butter cups, Ben & Jerry's goes beyond that by adding things such as chocolate and peanut butter swirls in their ice cream. Instead of using bits of peanut butter cups, they will use big chunks, or, in some cases, halves of peanut butter cups. It's no wonder then that they have a large following. Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream has tapped into that part of the human brain and appetite that keeps craving for more, more, more.

Enter Ben & Jerry's Red Velvet Cake flavor. I will admit in this entry that I have never had red velvet cake or cupcakes before. I've heard of people raving about how good it is, but I've never really had the drive to go out and try it for myself. This ice cream is supposedly cake batter flavored with cream cheese frosting swirls and bits of red velvet cake scattered throughout. I figured I might as well try this flavor and see if I liked it enough to go out and buy some actual red velvet baked goods.

Ben & Jerry's Red Velvet Cake Ice Cream

The ice was good enough; it was smooth, and didn't give too much of a cake batter flavor. Sometimes ice creams will have too much of that raw cake batter flavor that is off-putting to me. I liked the cream cheese swirls, as their slight tartness cut into the sweetness of the ice cream. However, the component that I didn't like so much were the red velvet cake pieces. The pieces all tasted a bit too gummy for my liking. Instead of eating cake, it felt like I was eating clay. I can't compare this to real red velvet cake, but I will say that the ice cream and swirls were good, and the only thing I didn't like were the gummy pieces of red velvet cake.

Ben & Jerry's Red Velvet Cake: 7/10

Yaki sauce potato chips

This purchase was another spur of the moment, “Why the heck not?” kind of buy. Barbecue is a great flavor for potato chips. It’s hard to go wrong with sea salt & vinegar. However, sometimes you want to break away and try something new. Sometimes you want to try something that you might not see again. Who knows how long a new flavor will last? Maybe it’ll last a few weeks, or maybe it’ll be good enough to be permanent. Regardless, you can’t take those kinds of risks and assume that that flavor will still be there tomorrow.

In comes Yaki Sauce potato chips. Do I know if this is even the right name? Of course I don’t. What I do know is that I don’t know what Yaki sauce is. There’s a cow on top, and it looks kind of tired. It’s like the Eeyore of cows. Well, maybe it looks so dejected because there’s a steak in the bottom right corner. From this, I will assume that this is something that you dress your steak in.

A Yaki sauce potato chip

The texture of the potato chip is dryer and a bit thicker than a regular potato chip, but not as thick as a kettle chip. The flavor is sweet, like a barbecue flavored potato chip, but there is no salty flavor at any point. There’s also a slight curry flavor that comes at the end. I liked this chip and found it to be very flavorful. It’s a nice detour from the flavors that are available everyday at your local supermarket.

Yaki sauce potato chips: 8/10

O'Zack Gyoza flavored chips

BBQ, Sour Cream, Cheddar, Salt & Vinegar...these are some of the flavors we normally see when we buy potato chips at the supermarket. However, instead of BBQ, why not have BBQ brisket flavored potato chips? Why not have a fried chicken flavor? Maybe it's because it would be difficult for chip manufacturers to emulate the flavors and aromas. However, in the past I wrote about chips that tasted like beef tongue sprinkled with a bit of lemon (gyutan). If that flavor can be made, why not the above listed?

From the country that brought you potato chips that somewhat did the flavor of grilled beef quite well, we have gyoza flavored chips. Gyoza, potstickers, whatever you want to call them is probably not on the top of the list of potato chip flavors that Americans want. It's probably not on any American's list. However, Japan has decided to be more adventurous with their flavors, and thus has produced gyoza flavored chips.

An O'Zack chip

The aroma of the chip is very reminiscent to that of a pot sticker. You get a hint of pot sticker skin an then you get a slight pork flavor to finish. Overall, it was quite a surprise that they were able to do this. It is not just a novel chip, but it is a good chip as well. It seems as if Doritos is the only chip that dares venture out of the normal chip flavor comfort zone. One day I would like to find steak flavored potato chips or something ridiculous like that in a grocery store.

O'Zack Gyoza flavored chips: 8.5/10