McDonald’s continues upping its McFlurry game with a new flavor: caramel brownie. They had a special promotion on the release day, May 4—get a free McFlurry, no purchase necessary. Naturally, we had to go and try this new treat, especially since it’s free. We will ignore the fact that it was not available in the McDonald’s on Main Street and we had to go a few towns over for it.
John:
To be quite frank, I am not the biggest fan of caramel. Now, I know what you might be thinking: why are you getting a McFlurry with caramel if you do not like it? It was free, okay? Go judge elsewhere. Anyway, I know a lot of people do like caramel, but the general stickiness always rubbed me the wrong way and made the treat not too enjoyable. With all of that aside, on to the dessert.
My favorite ice cream comes from Dairy Queen’s Blizzards, which in my eyes are the epitome of what ice cream with toppings should be. Why am I bringing this up? This is because one of the things that attracts me to Blizzards the most is the fact that when you get them, the toppings are always evenly distributed throughout the dessert. For the McFlurry, the same cannot be said: the top was rife with all of the toppings you could ever ask for, but the bottom was filled with ice cream and only ice cream. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong about this, as you can always mix it yourself, but why pay for something that I have to put work into?
So, how did the toppings taste? Pretty good, especially the brownies. Though I’m not a fan of caramel, I have to admit that it went with the dessert quite nicely. The caramel was sticky and stuck to the spoon (surprise, surprise…) but was not awful in any other way. The vanilla ice cream was extraordinarily basic, and is not worth mentioning whatsoever. The only thing that it was used for in my eyes was a medium through which the caramel and brownies are delivered.
I probably wouldn’t get this again, though it was great to take a trip and get it for free when they did their promotion. Overall, I would probably give it a six out of 10. Good enough to eat it if it was given to you for free, but not worth whatever price they charge for it when it’s not free. As an aside, I much preferred the Chips Ahoy McFlurry—and the KitKat McFlurry that Sasha has tried sounds incredibly intriguing!
Sasha:
What can I say, McDonald’s in this country is really stepping up its McFlurry game. Growing up, I ate KitKat McFlurries, so when I moved here and discovered that the only constant flavors are Oreo and M&M, I was underwhelmed to say the least. But then they came out with the Chips Ahoy one back in September, which gave me hope. Now onto the actual McFlurry; I have to say that I LOVE vanilla ice cream with caramel. I think it is the best ice cream/sauce combination there is. Brownies also happen to be my favorite ice cream topping. Has McDonald’s been reading my diary? You know, even if they were, I wouldn’t even be mad because this is a perfect McFlurry. In case you couldn’t tell, I had very high expectations for this dessert.
The ice cream was your regular McDonald’s vanilla ice cream, which I actually really like: so far, so good. They were very generous with the amount of brownies and caramel that went into the McFlurry. The caramel sauce was delicious, and the way it mixed with the vanilla ice cream was heavenly. Unfortunately, the brownies did not meet my expectations. They tasted pretty good, they had chocolate chips in them, but they tasted too much like an actual brownie. Which I guess, I’m glad they’re using real brownies, but whenever I got a piece of brownie in my spoon, it no longer felt like I was eating ice cream. The brownies were a little too big, almost the size of a regular bite of a brownie. Because of this, the two components of the McFlurry did not work too well together. I also wish the brownies were a little less chewy, maybe something similar to what Dairy Queen and Ben and Jerry’s do. It was very hard for the flavors to truly mix because the brownie pieces were so big. I had to actively try to make sure I’m eating both brownie pieces and the ice cream at the same time.
Overall, the McFlurry didn’t meet all my expectations, but they were sky high, so take this with a grain of salt. The McFlurry was still very good, definitely the best one McDonald’s has, but they have some work to do. If they make the brownies smaller and more crumbly, I would definitely give this McFlurry a nine, but until they do that, it gets a solid 8.5 from me.
