As a bonafide ice cream lover I don’t pay too much attention to Dreyer’s. I’ve had my fair share of their products over the span of my life, but the end result is usually pretty lackluster, like last years Pumpkin Spice Latte, so I don’t feel a need to seek out their newest releases. That being said, sometimes packaging can jump out at me so convincingly as I slowly peruse the frozen aisle that I can’t help but stop; as was the case with the recently re-branded Kit Kat ice cream. In 2016 Dreyer’s released a line of candy bar themed cream’s including 100 Grand, Baby Ruth, and, you guessed it, Kit Kat. They’ve changed the packaging to more closely mimic the wrapper of a candy bar, and although the container doesn’t explicitly state this, they also changed the base from their normal higher fat Grand style to the lighter variety usually reserved for Slow Churned. The new Kit Kat ice cream combines chocolate light ice cream with a wafer swirl and pieces of Kit Kat candy.

The ice cream, as expected, is light and slightly airy but actually has a really great milk chocolate flavor that legitimately surprised me. There’s no rich cocoa bitterness, but I’m not looking for that in a Kit Kat, and as such, it’s pretty true to the task at hand. The quicker melting nature of Dreyer’s actually works well to channel the creamy exterior of a candy bar, and what it lacks in density it makes up for in a smooth and fluffy, but not gummy, texture.

The pieces of Kit Kat are fairly small and fairly ample, providing a solid toothy chomp that pleasantly counters the smooth creamy ice cream. They’re bigger than finely chopped but smaller than chunks of a candy bar. They actually remind me more of squished up balls of Kit Kat, much like Buncha Crunch, with a slight crisp embedded within the pieces rather than chopped up bars. The presence of hard chocolate is much more apparent than the more complex and layered wafer-dominant texture of a Kit Kat, but they taste and feel different than just regular chocolate chips. More texture than actual flavor, but they get the point across.

The aspect of this flavor that I was most the skeptical of actually turned out to be the best – the wafer swirl. The swirl weaves in and out of the container from small wisps to big spoon-cradling chunks with nearly perfect wafer texture and flavor. It has all the crunch and give from the inside of a Kit Kat with a very good, slightly buttery flavor that somehow survives through the sweet milk chocolate base. The flavor immediately reminded me of something, and sure enough from looking at the ingredients, the first ingredient is the always wonderful graham crackers. The distinct golden crunch of the graham makes up the backbone of the wafer swirl and it’s brilliant – bringing life and a genuine Kit Kat aura to the experience.

This is a good ice cream, and for a light ice cream it’s great. It shockingly really does taste and feel like a Kit Kat in frozen form, and the execution of the wafer swirl alone is worth the cost. For 140 calories and 5 grams of fat per serving I can’t imagine it going any better, and Dreyer’s have won me over with the re-branding of their candy bar line.

Rating: 8/10

Found at: Safeway ($4.99)