New product Wednesday, at Dallas-area stores: Ben & Jerry’s Limited-Edition Pumpkin Cheesecake ice cream

by Teresa Gubbins

If you subscribe to the theory that "If it's pumpkin, it must be good" (and if you don't, you should), then you'll cheer the arrival of Ben & Jerry's "Limited Batch" Pumpkin Cheesecake ice cream. Assuming you can find a pint. This seasonal flavor was first introduced in pint form in 2006 but has been notoriously difficult to get ahold of. Maybe it's distributed more widely this year? Never saw it around here previously and it showed up at my local Tom Thumb, although they did only have this one pint.

Pumpkin continues to be a big limited-edition flavor, especially this time of the year, and as pumpkin-flavored things go, this is pretty good. It differs in 1. color, 2. texture, and 3. flavor from the pumpkin ice creams offered by most other ice cream makers which are usually rust-colored and have a smooth, creamy texture (still nonetheless good; after all, they're pumpkin).

Ben & Jerry's is instead cream-colored and has a "graham swirl" that injects a sugary gritty texture; it's odd though not unpleasant, assuming you are OK with grit. The graham provides an alternative to the cinnamon-clove spices flavor of the ice cream, which also has a prominent milky-creamy component.

In summary, there's more going on than the typical pumpkin ice cream. It also melts quickly back into milk which tells you it's not all fake and airy; but it's also not overly fatty and slick, either. Nice!

Genuine "pumpkin" is among the ingredients -- No. 6, after cream, skim milk, water, liquid sugar, and sugar -- and that's also relatively rare. The breakdown is 270 calories per half-cup serving (not great but not as bad as some of the Haagen Dazs flavors that run to 360 calories per serving), with 15 grams of fat, and 8 grams of saturated fat.

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