- The look of the container of Starbucks "Hot Chocolate" Ice Cream ties in so nicely with the rest of the brand's packaging. What I really loved was that parts of the container look like their coffee cups. The little boxes on the side of a cup where the baristas mark off what you ordered with a Sharpie were present with ice creamy notes. This canister has a box labeled "coffee" and, in a hand written font, the word "nope" was etched. Super cute.
Full to the top, this ice cream, at first glance, appears to be chocolate and marshmallow. You must read to realize there is no marshmallow in this hot chocolate. The white is vanilla, which does a good job at neutralizing the rich chocolate taste. Upon tasting, this ice cream WAS hot chocolate, no doubt about it! I could taste the cocoa powder and syrupy flavor of a good hot chocolate...cold. The more I ate, it started to kick in that this reminded me of
something... a blast from the past... Jell-O Fudge Pudding Pops! I used to love them! The ice cream was smooth and thick and only 40% saturated fat (low compared to Starbucks' competitors). I'll ding it for lack of fudge ribbons as I didn't see many. Rarely do we eat a whole pint between us. We did this time. This is almost a gold cone.
- The new look of Starbucks' ice cream line is nice. The containers look like coffee cups and the ice cream photo on the top replicates looking inside to see what you got. The "checkboxes" carried over from Starbucks' coffee cups is a nice touch, particularly the "none" written in the "coffee" box.
This ice cream smells like hot chocolate and even looks like hot chocolate. In fact, it looks just like hot chocolate that's had some marshmallows melted and swirled in it. But, the ice cream didn't taste a lot like hot chocolate for me. I was certainly happy with the chocolate taste -- a smooth, rich chocolate that was balanced excellently with the vanilla to give a subtle flavor that wasn't overpowering -- and the full-to-the-top container, but I couldn't shake the thought of whether this was truly hot chocolate ice cream or not.
I fully admit to not being a huge hot chocolate drinker, but it doesn't really matter as this ice cream still works. I could, and did, eat a lot of Starbucks "Hot Chocolate" ice cream. Of course, if I wanted the same taste, I could probably find a Vanilla/Fudge ice cream that would do the trick for about half the price. This is only barely a Cone Up.