While pondering ice cream flavors to test, I struggled more than I usually do. Other products I’ve taste-tested, like marinara sauce and boxed mac ‘n’ cheese, are pretty limited in their flavor offerings…but ice cream flavors? The limit does not exist. Vanilla? Too boring. Chocolate? Way too polarizing. And when we start to enter the world of ice cream flavors with mix-ins, things can get pretty wild.
All roads and schools of thought led me back to one flavor in particular, which just so happens to be my personal favorite: cookies ‘n’ cream. Why cookies ‘n’ cream? I’ve got two reasons in particular:
• The vast majority of ice cream brands out there use a simple vanilla base for their cookies ‘n’ creams, so I figured that this flavor would be a solid indicator of the overall quality of the vanilla ice cream itself — how smooth and creamy it is, its general sweetness level, and if it delivers in the flavor department.
• The Oreo-adjacent chocolate cookies are also a relatively straightforward mix-in — no swirls of anything, and nothing complicated. To that end, I concluded that the individual flavors of the various elements would be easy to distinguish from one another, and I also realized that cookies ‘n’ cream would likely be a great barometer for how much each brand gives you when it comes to the mix-ins. Let’s be real, if they’re generous with their chocolate cookies, they’re probably not going to rip you off on their cookie dough or cake batter or chocolate chips.
Source: https://www.buzzfeed.com/rossyoder/best-ice-cream-brands
