After a week of rumors and even a sighting in the wild, Ben & Jerry's officially confirmed the existence of Late Night Snack, their latest ice cream flavor tied to talk show host Jimmy Fallon, at a press conference last night, where they revealed how the flavor came about.
The idea stemmed from a sketch Fallon did on his show last year called "Ladysmith Snack Mambzo," which played up Fallon's (and the crew's) love for the Vermont-based ice cream company. After that, Ben and Jerry did the only thing they saw fit: "We sent ice cream," says Jerry. After an ice cream party in Fallon's studio ("That's why I tell everyone they should get their own talk show!"), the idea of a flavor partnership came up and Fallon immediately started thinking of ingredients, settling on potato chips.
Eventually, the folks from Ben & Jerry's came back from their research lab with two unlabeled pints of ice cream, one chocolate-based and the other vanilla bean. "I felt like I was in a Stanley Kubrick movie—he pulls them out of this cold bag, smoke spilling out everywhere," recounts Fallon. What they had come up with were "potato chip clusters," which are Kettle Chips crushed into ball form and coated in fudge so they "never get not crispy!" The final product pairs vanilla bean ice cream with fudge covered potato chip clusters and a caramel swirl.
Late Night Snack—which benefits Fair Trade University, a programed aimed at educating college students about the benefits of Fair Trade products—is available this week.
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