Six kids, seven adults, five grocery-store brands of chocolate ice cream and one big kitchen table.
On Sunday, February 8, 2015, Macaroni Kid held a blind ice cream tasting to determine which ice cream was best. Contenders included Blue Bunny, Breyers, Turkey Hill, Friendly’s and Hagen Daz, all of which were purchased the day before from our local grocery store. Labels were concealed and ice creams were tasted one at a time and without embellishment - no sprinkles, whipped cream or chocolate sauce - just a small scoop in a plain white bowl.
Each ice cream was evaluated on six criteria: chocolate-i-ness, cream-i-ness, color, consistency, finish and overall flavor. At the start, we recognized that each element was somewhat subjective, but that was okay because taste is subjective. With that in mind, we encouraged the panel to grade the ice creams against one another and in accordance with each person’s personal preferences.
Here’s what we learned.
Breyers boasted the best color, Hagen Daz froze the hardest (and had to be softened in the microwave before serving) and Friendly’s was the chocolatiest. Tahnie, nine-years-old and raised in Australia, was the only member of the panel to select Hagen Daz as her overall favorite, while Michael Nolan, one of the Hamptons top restaurateurs who tastes food for a living and serves only small-batch artisan ice cream is his restaurant, selected Friendly’s. His son Jack and I gave Breyers two thumbs up. My two kids, different in all things, remained true to their nature: Mason choose Turkey Hill as his all-around favorite, while Maddie, like her mom, was pro Breyers.
And the overall winners?
Friendly's came out on top as the overall favorite, with Breyers running a close second. Although, when the labels were revealed and ingredient lists examined, Breyers and Turkey Hill got the nod from the moms with ingredients that included simply cream, nonfat milk, sugar and cocoa in the Turkey Hill and milk, cream, sugar, cocoa, whey, tara gum and natural flavors in the Breyers.
Three other things we learned: (1) all chocolate ice cream is good; (2) people like different things (3) ice cream tastings are fun.
If you’d like to host your own, you are welcome to grab Macaroni Kid’s Chocolate Ice Cream Tasting Form HERE. We’d love to hear what you discover!
