I’ve never been to Ohio, but I’ve heard a lot about the lore of the Buckeye. No, not the actual nut from the tree, but the chocolate dipped peanut butter fudge Christmas confection popular in the state that seems to have fellow choco-PB lovers goin’ goo goo ga ga. I’ll be honest, as many chocolate covered peanut butter truffles, cookies, cupcakes, and general candles as I’ve had, I’ve never had a proper buckeye, and I’m alright with letting Little G once again pop my tastebud cherry with their take on the Midwest classic. Little G’s Peanut Butter Buckeye combines milk chocolate ice cream with peanut butter swirl, buckeyes, and peanut butter cookie dough.

As promising as this flavor sounds on paper, my journey with this pint began very negatively. Digging into the sea of darkness my spoon made a heartbreaking noise to any ice cream lover – the crunchy sound of ice. Smooth creamy silence was replaced with a harsh scraping noise and tasting it wasn’t any better – it was like a Fudgesicle. As I noted in an earlier review, my shipment showed up very soft, and it seems as though this one took a hit it couldn’t recover from.

Being that I’m not a quitter, especially when it comes to my food-related splurges, I kept digging, and fortunately about half way into the pint I was greeted with lovely, creamy, ice cream that actually exceeded my expectations for a chocolate base. The milk chocolate ice cream is nearly flawless – extremely smooth and luscious with a big, bold cocoa flavor that has just the right amount of sweetness and a touch more darkness than I was anticipating, which was a very pleasant surprise.

As is evidenced by the pictures, this container is brimming with mix-ins, and is so dense it might be the heaviest pint of ice cream I’ve ever picked up. The flavors’ namesake, the buckeyes, are all over the place, and are perfectly sized to take over the spoon but not so big that they can’t be taken down whole. Even though these chocolatey balls are the most unique component at play, they’re my least favorite, and I found the sheer volume of them to be distracting. I’ve learned about myself recently that I don’t care much for an abundant amount of hard chocolate in my ice cream, and while they are filled with a peanut butter cream, the amount of filling is very small compared to the chocolate, and they lose some of their luster against the chocolate base. I may have liked them more if the ice cream was peanut butter flavored and I got that lovely Reese’s harmony, but chocolate on chocolate with a hint of PB isn’t really my thing, and I ended up eating around them more than searching for them.

Fortunately for me and my PB-hungry tastebuds, the other two mix-ins are no stranger to Little G’s arsenal and they are downright awesome. The peanut butter cookie dough pieces are big, slightly salty, and gritty with a buttery chew that I absolutely love. The peanut butter is simply peanut butter, in massive gobs, which have hardened and gradually soften in their salty fatty, just-sweet-enough splendor as I continue to eat in glee. The large amounts of peanut butter can become a problem, essentially like bricks, but I choose to just let them sit there and gradually chip away at them rather than see them as a frozen issue.

While this buckeye journey started on a down note, it definitely ended on a high, and it’s the type of ice cream that is so intense and decadent it forces you to slow down and savor the massive flavor at hand. It’s one of those flavors that demonstrates everything Little G is about, and with some more careful shipping and a bit more attention to detail, this could be a classic entry to the limited time chronicles of Little G.

Rating: 8.5/10
Found at: http://www.goldbely.com (use code seanpancake0 for $25 off of your first order!)