All About Starbucks Holiday Ice Cream: Peppermint Mocha and Signature Hot Chocolate Ice Cream

Peppermint Mocha Starbucks Ice Cream Description and Review
I was happy to find the mocha and peppermint ice cream are swirled together, visually resembling like a artisan coffee drink. Inspired by the seasonal peppermint drinks, it is a rich ice cream with a creamy texture. The mocha isn't incredibly strong, but it's definitely a Starbucks ice cream for those who enjoy mocha; if you are thinking of giving the ice cream shot because you're a fan of Starbucks and of peppermint, you may be disappointed. The name of this Starbucks ice cream doesn't indicate as such, but it comes with small, scattered chocolate chips as well as the advertised mocha and peppermint ice cream. This might be to balance out the mocha a bit and add a kick to the peppermint. I found it complemented the other flavors very well and made the peppermint mocha Starbucks ice cream extra enjoyable.

Signature Hot Chocolate Starbucks Ice Cream Description and Review
While I love Starbucks, Starbucks ice cream, and felt the peppermint mocha ice cream was unique and decadent, I did enjoy Starbucks' signature hot chocolate ice cream more. Maybe I just don't love peppermint and mocha as much as I love hot chocolate. Either way, the Starbucks signature hot chocolate ice cream was just as rich and creamy as the peppermint mocha ice cream, but had a thick trail of gooey chocolate running through the center of the ice cream, reminiscent of thick hot chocolate. The actual ice cream used were a combination of two other Starbucks ice cream flavors, vanilla and chocolate. However, the vanilla frappuccino ice cream was merely used to accent the chocolate and tasted more like whipped cream than anything else (the vanilla Starbucks ice cream uses whipped cream as a base and essentially just adds vanilla to make it taste like a frappuccino, so it was a great whipped cream surrogate, perhaps even better).

Starbucks Ice Cream Nutritional Facts
Compared to what I was expecting, the Starbucks ice cream nutritional facts almost look healthy. A serving of one half cup may seem a bit less than what you may have hoped for, but the peppermint mocha and signature hot chocolate Starbucks ice cream is rather rich; as long as you aren't replacing Starbucks ice cream for a meal, one half a cup is fine per serving.

Each serving of the peppermint mocha ice cream as well as signature hot chocolate has 230 calories, 13 grams of fat, and 23 grams of sugar. The primary nutritional difference between the two is that the peppermint mocha ice cream only has 40 milligrams of cholesterol and 45 milligrams of sodium whereas the signature hot chocolate has 50 milligrams of cholesterol and 60 milligrams of sodium. The other nutritional facts between the two types of Starbucks ice cream are fairly negligible, unless you have extremely strict dietary regulations.

WORKS CITED
http://www.starbucks.com/menu