I’ve always liked Blue Bunny ice cream, but I finally found a flavor that I don’t like: No-Sugar-Added Banana Split. As someone who needs to watch her sugar, and someone who comes from a family of diabetics, I’m always on the lookout for no sugar added, and sugar free candy and ice cream flavors. A recent visit to my local Wal-Mart revealed that Blue Bunny has moved into the no-sugar-added market, and I decided to try the No-Sugar-Added Banana Split flavor.
The Banana Split No-Sugar-Added flavor from Blue Bunny is an interesting addition to their family of ice cream. They claim that this is a mixture of no sugar added vanilla ice cream, cherry pieces, pineapple pieces, strawberry-banana swirls, chocolate swirls, and mixed nuts. Maybe if I had read the ingredient list prior to bringing it home I would have had second thoughts. Is it just me, or does that sound like an awful lot going on in an ice cream flavor?
Despite my reservations, I decided to give it a try and see how it was. The first thing I noticed was that this ice cream is extremely hard to scoop. Even after a fifteen minute drive from the store, this Blue Bunny No-Sugar-Added Banana Split was rock hard. I had to leave it sit on the counter for another 10-15 minutes before it was ready to scoop.
Even then it was still hard to scoop. The ice cream had softened considerably, but the random bits of other things inside it were still very hard. The pineapple and cherry pieces were hard enough that I felt like I was going to chip a tooth.
There’s a pattern with ice cream companies saying that they use a lot of ingredients in their ice cream, and Blue Bunny is no exception. The problem with the No Sugar Added Banana Split flavor is that it actually had too many things inside the carton.
Cherry Pieces: There were actually a large number of cherry pieces in the ice cream, but they stayed very hard, and didn’t soften even as the ice cream softened.
Pineapple Pieces: Like the cherry pieces, these never softened. They had a nice flavor though, for a frozen fruit but there weren’t as many pieces of the pineapple.
Strawberry-Banana Swirl: Unless someone had told me that this had banana in it, I would have never known. It tastes exactly like strawberry, with no real banana taste. The strawberry almost seemed to overpower the ice cream.
Chocolate Swirl: I really liked the chocolate swirl, which had a rich and fudgy taste. There just wasn’t enough of it in the ice cream.
Mixed Nuts: It wasn’t until I was halfway through the bowl until I discovered that there were actually nuts inside the ice cream. I’m not sure what kind of nuts they used, but there were not a lot.
The No-Sugar-Added Blue Bunny flavor of ice cream is an interesting addition, but it tastes more like a random mixture of things than a real banana split.
