The sweetness level? Also off! I don't love an overly-sweet dessert, but I'd say this one wasn't sweet enough. In terms of the vanilla flavor, it was hardly there. Like, so hard I had to chew it - and remember, I took all of these ice creams out of the fridge at the same time to let them thaw a bit. For a brand known for their rich and creamy vanilla ice cream (heck, I've heard lots of people swear that their vanilla is the best vanilla!), I found it to be aggressively hard. On top of the seriously disappointing cookie situation, I found the ice cream itself to be totally lackluster. 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. 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.

The Oreo-adjacent chocolate cookies are also a relatively straightforward mix-in - no swirls of anything, and nothing complicated.

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.

Why cookies 'n' cream? I've got two reasons in particular: And when we start to enter the world of ice cream flavors with mix-ins, things can get pretty wild.Īll 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.

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. While pondering ice cream flavors to test, I struggled more than I usually do.

Red button ice cream review