Peanut Butter Cookie
Cookie dough flavored ice cream with a peanut butter cookie swirl and chunks of peanut butter cookie dough
Date Tried - March 2, 2023
Location - Home, in our stately green chair
Format - Half Gallon
Milkshake it? - No
Buy Again? - No
“Back by popular demand!”
Ahem, is this true? Was the return of Peanut Butter Cookie actually the direct result of Stewart’s data analysts interpreting customer buying trends and opinions? Or is my hunch correct—that this “popular demand” is a fabricated truth, a means to build said demand through mythologizing and storytelling?
Sometimes…it all just seems like a simulation.
Regardless, Peanut Butter Cookie is back; I first knew this because Lisa showed me an Instagram post that announced its return. I didn’t know about it prior to it’s reemergence, but when I found out, I was excited. We had recently eaten a rather astounding amount of peanut butter cookies on a ski trip to Quebec, so my personal peanut butter cookie fervor was higher than usual.
We tried it on March 2nd, my father’s 63rd birthday. My first thought was that the cookie dough base is rather sweet. Back on October 13th, I determined that the cookie dough base of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough was also too much. I presume this is the same base, so no big shocker there.
Initially, I couldn’t taste the peanut butter, but I did try this flavor at the height of a cold. At best, my taste buds were operating at fifty percent capacity. Once the illness had subsided some, the peanut butter was very evident. And it should be—there is a peanut butter cookie swirl and peanut butter cookie dough. When it comes to the Limited Edition flavors (of which Peanut Butter Cookie is one), I want them to be radical. They’re not canonical; they deserve to have a little more whimsy and extremism, like how high fashion is basically a means of throwing outlandish clothing concepts at the wall and seeing what sticks. For that reason, the heavy-handed peanut butter should be a plus, but it’s simply too much with the already-too-sweet base.
So that’s strike one.
Strike two is the chalkiness of the cookie dough pieces. Moments after our first bites, Lisa noted this aloud as the same thought was running through my head. It’s unmistakable and it’s a shame.
Of the Limited Edition flavors—which, in many ways, have impressed me more than expected so far—this has been the most disappointing. If you were prepared to take your hat off in admiration, I might recommend that you think about leaving it on. That’s not to say we didn’t eat the entire half gallon, because we did. [To quote Lisa, “This isn’t even good, but I have to keep eating it.” ]
No, rather, it is to say this: in my review of Tiramisu, I dramatically soapboxed my intent to try every flavor, including all of the Limited Editions. I’m here to tell you now that is not going to happen for two reasons:
When I said that, I was still a courageous and bright-eyed youngster who hadn’t yet been jaded by the magnitude of this challenge.
The rate at which Stewart’s is releasing Limited Edition flavors is far more prolific than I realized at the beginning.
This challenge cannot go on forever; it’s taking something of a toll on me, despite how much I enjoy delivering the content and gathering your feedback. Soon and very soon, I must be onto the next thing, a thing that may or may not involve the written word.
We tried Peanut Butter Cookie while watching the extended edition of The Return of the King, the third installment of the Lord of the Rings series. [Spoiler Alert]: In the end, Frodo gives up his life in the Shire to board the White Ship and join the elves in Valinor, the Undying Lands. This moment contains one of the most poignant lines of dialogue in the whole series: “I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me.”
…I wonder if that’s the corner I’m backing myself into. At the end of this, will my ability to sit down and write be helped or hindered? Will I be able to participate in the great Stewart’s experiment in the same manner?
Or will my dairy vessel be tarnished in some way, impressed upon forever by this weighted quest?
I’ll let this slightly modified quote from Frodo play us out:
“It is my burden, and no one else can bear it. It is too late…I am almost in its power now.”
NOTE: Two of our friends from college are filming and assembling what promises to be an incredibly moving piece of documentary film about cancer, travel, friendship & joy. It’s called Cancer Free and is being funded on Kickstarter at the moment. They reached their initial goal in a few days, but are hoping to raise enough money to have the flexibility to keep the project fully independent while also allowing for the professional services needed to finalize it. If you’re able, check out the initial trailer and help support this wonderful project:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cancerfreemovie/cancer-free-feature-documentary-mid-capture