Taste Test: Ice Cream

 

For my taste test, I decided to use three different brands of my favorite flavor of ice cream, Cookies & Cream. I usually get the standard HEB brand of this flavor every time I chose to get some. This time, I took a trip to Walmart and picked up some new selections. From what was available, I bought the Walmart great value brand, Blue Bell, and Blue Bunny flavors of Cookies & Cream ice cream to hopefully find the next best thing.

The process I took for testing was fairly simple, but required some help. I first began by grabbing three bowls and labeled one brand on the bottom of each. This is where I asked my dad for help. I first stepped out of the room and had him turn the bowls over and put a scoop of each brand of ice cream in their respective bowls. Then once that was done, he placed them in a different and random order, each labeled with a number from 1-3, this way I wouldn’t know which is which. I would then take a bite of each and describe the taste, feel, and finish by ranking them. To prevent mixing flavors, I would take a huge sip of water to cleanse my taste buds before I move onto testing the next brand.

Visually and proportionally, my dad actually did a great job. I think he put an even amount of ice cream in each bowl with a decent amount of cookies in each serving.

 Beginning the taste test, I started with a spoonful of mystery bowl #1. This brand was very heavy on the vanilla side. There wasn’t much Cookies & Cream flavor. I didn’t taste like there was very much cookie either; any piece I did consume, the cookie was very soft and soggy and not very firm like usual. For bowl #2, this taste was sort of odd. This flavor felt more as a milk and cookies vibe than anything. However, this is more of what I expect Cookies & Cream ice cream to taste like. The cookie I tasted were nice and firm. And the ice cream was overall the firmest of all the three and not soft, which I prefer. Onto bowl #3. This brand was the sweetest of the three. It also happened to have the best flavor out of the three of them. This was exactly what I expect Cookies & Cream ice cream to taste like. It was right in between the other two brands in firmness. It wasn’t too hard and not too soft, which was perfect.

 My final rankings are probably obvious. From best to worst, my final standings were 3, 2, 1. After flipping the bowls over, bowl #1 was the Blue Bunny brand. Bowl #2 was Blue Bell. Finally, and miraculously, bowl #3 and my overall favorite was the Walmart great value brand. I figured something silly like this would happen. I comedically told my dad before we started “Watch the generic brand end up being the best”, but I didn’t think it would actually happen. I will say that I will never be buying Blue Bunny ice cream again. Most likely won’t dabble within Blue Bell either unless push comes to shove. As for the great value brand, I honestly don’t know what to say, I guess less is more.