"Is there such a thing as milk-flavored ice cream?" With summer pie season around the corner, it's important to have the right vanilla ice cream for proper scoopage on top. We conducted a blind tasting with six readily available nationwide brands: Häagen-Dazs, Ben and Jerry's, Blue Bunny, Breyers, Horizon, and Edy's (aka Dreyer's in the western states). They were judged on a scale of 1 to 5, according to texture, flavor richness, and overall vanilla-ness. The results, in descending order: Häagen-Dazs Score: 4.5 This was a unanimous crowd favorite. It had all the trademarks of a good vanilla ice cream: nice silky mouthfeel, major potential as an apple-pie buddy, and, hey, it actually tasted like vanilla. Keep up the good...
Continue reading »
With the dust still not settled on the strawberry ice cream issue, another ice cream controversy is a-brewing here at Serious Eats World HQ. This time it's a vanilla ice cream question that has us vexed. Do the little black vanilla bean dots in certain brands of vanilla ice cream necessarily connote quality? In other words, are the vanilla ice creams with the black specks better than ones that are just plain vanilla (ha, ha)? I think the answer is no. There are plenty of high-end vanilla extracts around that probably provide as much or more pure vanilla flavor than those little black specks. Certain serious eaters, who will remain nameless, swear by those little black specks. Once again I...
Continue reading »
