Dairy Queen Summer Berry Cheesecake Blizzard and the DQ Choco Brownie Extreme Blizzard

[New for Spring 2018] I decided to check the DQ website this morning when I stumbled upon them running their "Summer Blizzard Menu".... wait, what? It's only been spring for like a week! Well, hold on to your socks because the s'mores blizzard is back, as is the cotton candy blizzard. For new stuff we've got the Summer Berry Cheesecake Blizzard and the Jurassic Chomp Blizzard. And that list doesn't even include the blizzard of the month which is the new peanut butter cookie dough blizzard. My wife and I have some deciding to do.

DQ Summer Blizzard Menu (three months early)

For the sake of the blog, my wife picks the summer berry cheesecake blizzard. She does love cheesecake so it's not a huge sacrifice. For the sake of my nut allergic son, I skip over the peanut butter filled bliizards. Sorry, it had to be done but I will try to get back to DQ on my own soon enough. What I did decide to get is the Choco Brownie Extreme blizzard. They don't call it new because it's basically the Royal Ultimate Choco Brownie Blizzard without the fudge core. I forgot to try that blizzard while it was available so we'll call this new to me.

Now "summer berry" is DQ's blend of real raspberries, blackberries and blueberries. That's right, real berries. That's a switch up from the old Tripleberry blizzard which was strawberry, raspberry and blackberry puree. Will real berries and a swap of strawberry for blueberry make a difference? You bet it did. My wife also lucked out in getting fresh cheesecake bites in her blizzard.

Let's start from the beginning as we start eating our blizzards. All is going fairly well. Now my blizzard is just brownies, choco chunks, and cocoa fudge blended in dq soft serve. Nothing crazy here and you'll probably feel like you've had this blizzard before. It was tasty but nothing outrageous. If you go to DQ with any regularity, you can probably envision what this tastes like. I try a spoonful of summer berry, she has a scoop of brownie, and then back to our own again.

We get about half way through our blizzards. I like mine but there's just not much to say about it. She likes hers overall but....   well the thing with using real fruit is it means there are seeds in it and that's just not her thing, especially in softserve. We decide to switch...

I dig in to discover not just fruit bits, but literal whole blueberries and raspberries (or blackberries, who can tell when covered in softserve). That's surprising DQ. I mean, this is something I expect from international DQ, not U.S. DQ (and if you don't think there isn't a difference, just check out some of the worldwide DQ twitter feeds, I follow the one from Panama in particular). Part of me is definitely impressed by them taking things up a notch like that.

Now the best part of it is that we've effectively gotten a blueberry blizzard, and that hasn't happened before. I feel like blueberry is a fairly old fashion flavor that has minimal impact in the ice cream freezer aisle nowadays. The bad news is that frozen raspberries aren't really that tasty in softserve. I'm sure that's blasphemous to some (which is understandable) but I don't get it. The occasional seeds didn't bother me, but the icy fruit bits did. I just didn't get it.

Now both blizzards were finished (along with some tasty DQ fries) and I won't steer you away from either one. This summer berry blizzard is unique and hopefully this is a sign that U.S. DQ is going to up their game. Only time will tell.

As with all DQ reviews, your mileage will vary greatly from store to store

Verdict?  blueberry! whole fruit!
Buy Again?  I honestly don't know