Every day, the dessert section of the frozen foods aisle draws flocks of consumers craving a reward to break up the monotony of the wheat-grass and water diet.
To be sure, there are many different and delicious flavors to choose from, but which one should you choose? What brands are of the highest overall quality? As the Iron Chef would put it, which ice cream reigns supreme?

Our quest for determining brand superiority was conducted as a blind taste test with approximately twenty persons and ten different brands of cookies and cream ice cream. Samples were graded on a scale from zero to five in both texture and taste. Other criteria were price, calories and fat per serving.

The testers reused spoons between samples and used different cups for each sample. In theory, testers were supposed to drink a small amount of water between samples to remove any aftertaste, but in practice testers moved from sample to sample with sporadically interspersed drinking.

Among the products tested, Baskin Robbins drew the highest ratings in both taste and texture, and turned out to also be well-priced and relatively non-hazardous to one’s arteries. Baskin Robbins brand Cookies and Cream was a rich, smoothly creamy treat with a mild vanilla base complemented by smoky chocolate cookie pieces. Tester Kris Snyder ‘s enthusiastic endorsement of “Correct taste, correct texture. Perfect! Wonderful! Yay!” seemed to have been a mostly universal reaction.

On the other side of the spectrum, Breyer’s, while not comparatively unhealthy, lacked body and tasted strongly of alcohol, drawing such comments as “Watery and alcoholic in flavor,” by tester Devon Dykwel.

An excellent cookies and cream-flavored ice cream should have a creamy, substantial texture devoid of iciness and gumminess. The vanilla base flavor should be natural, recognizable but not harsh or distracting, and stray alcohol flavors should range from mild to nonexistent. Amounts of chocolate cookie chunks should be generous and well-distributed but not so plentiful as to overpower the vanilla. The pieces themselves should be melt-in-the-mouth cakey, not hard or crunchy (though a certain crumbly texture is delicious), and should have a strong dark chocolate flavor. The ice cream should be balanced by sweet dairy vanilla and distinctive, not-sweet chocolate.

Beware of ice creams with artificial vanilla and harsh alcoholic tastes. A good ice cream should not be icy or airy and insubstantial. Also, cookies should be neither rare nor omnipresent. The whole point of cookies and cream is to have pleasing flavor and textural differences.

Unfortunately, the taste test suffered of several extenuating discrepancies. Although the blindness of the test was assured, the process of tasting each sample was lengthy (approximately thirty minutes), and near the end some of the ice creams were significantly melted and received lower scores than they would have otherwise garnered. Since the entire testing process was done at once, eventually the ice creams all began to taste the same as tester taste buds went numb. Drinking water between samples was also somewhat disregarded, so remnants of the last sample may have mingled with the following tastes. Furthermore, two samples of identical Dreyer’s ice cream both had high but noticeably different scores, further alluding to the fallibility of the test situation.

Regardless, the test has been successful in identifying some very good cookies and cream ice creams that will satisfy without causing bankruptcy or the spontaneous gain of ten extra pounds.