Honeycomb & Caramel Dairy Ice Cream (Sainsbury's)

A few weeks ago I discovered the peanut buttery tub of joy that Sainsbury's surreptitously keep in their freezers, and so I couldn't help but return to my local store to find out what else I was missing...

Cookie dough and honeycomb & caramel are the other two flavours in Sainsbury's own dairy ice cream range. It was a fairly easy choice between these two tubs for me; cookie dough is fairly widespread and never as good as Ben & Jerry's, whereas there's a distinct lack of luxury extras-added honeycomb ice cream -especially since the sad loss of Morrisons' Shortbread Millionaire's mash up. 

"Caramel flavoured dairy ice cream swirled with toffee sauce, honeycomb pieces and chocolate coated shortcake pieces."

I swear the caramel ice cream was softer in this tub than in the peanut version, but I must have imagined that because there appears to be similar ingredients in both: skimmed milk, double cream, sugar, skimmed cows' milk concentrate, glucose Syrup - AKA the good stuff. Perhaps it was the sauce that made it seem looser. As well as the textural issues this toffee ripple provided, it was also problematic on the flavour front. You see, the peanut tub worked well because it had the nut brittle to counteract and cut through the sweetness, but this toffee sauce just tipped the ice cream into sickly territory. Not great.

So what would make a caramel ice cream and toffee sauce even more cloying? Oh yes, that's right, honeycomb pieces. There was an abundance of them, and they were light and crunchy... but this tub really didn't need any more sugar, and remember, this is coming from an out & proud sugar addict. Ok, ok, yes I've also recently acknowledged that I can't hack a great deal of honeycomb, so maybe if you're a Cadbury Crunchie fan this might be up your street. It's just not in my neighbourhood. 

Thankfully, redemption reared its head when it came to the chocolate coated shortcake pieces, which were both buttery and crisp. The biggest issue with biscuit in ice cream is the fact that it often goes soggy, but the coating prevented this nicely. The chocolate wasn't anything of note, but it wasn't awful either. Which reminds me, I must try the McVities nibbles soon. 

Meh. As you might've gathered, I wasn't overly fussed on this tub. Bert however really enjoyed it, and said that he'd happily have it instead of Ben & Jerry's. If we were talking about the Sainsbury's peanut tub I'd agree with him, but this one? I'd rather pay the extra 50p and have B&J's any day. 

7/10