We Style-Examined 16 Ice Cream Sandwiches—Right here Are Our Favorites

Each summer time, I make myself a to-eat checklist. It typically includes issues like biting right into a candy, juicy peach over the sink, slicing right into a plump and completely ripe tomato, and shortly inhaling an ice cream sandwich earlier than it melts underneath the new solar. Whereas I really like ice cream in any and all varieties, there’s one thing notably interesting and nostalgic about vanilla ice cream sandwiched between two chocolate wafers, all neatly wrapped in foil or parchment. The query is: Which ice cream sandwiches are price shopping for? 

To search out the perfect ice cream sandwiches, our editors taste-tested 16 completely different manufacturers you are prone to discover at your native grocery retailer. We sampled 11 manufacturers of traditional chocolate wafer ice cream sandwiches and 5 manufacturers of ice cream cookie sandwiches. We tasted them in random order with out figuring out which was which, and sampled the traditional sandwiches and cookie sandwiches in separate batches to keep away from evaluating apples to oranges.

We tabulated the outcomes and topped an total winner for every class, together with a number of different worthy contenders we might be glad to maintain in our freezer at dwelling.

The Standards

A traditional ice cream sandwich ought to encompass luxuriously creamy vanilla ice cream wedged between agency but moist chocolate wafers. The ice cream ought to style balanced; it shouldn’t be cloyingly candy, and it shouldn’t be so foamy that it feels such as you’re consuming air. The wafers ought to be pleasantly bittersweet with wealthy notes of cocoa, and although they need to be sturdy sufficient to encase the ice cream, they shouldn’t be brittle or dry—the ought to be substantive however nonetheless yield sufficient that the ice cream would not get squished out if you chunk down.

An ice cream cookie sandwich must also comprise wealthy, flavorful vanilla ice cream. The cookies ought to be good and chewy, with beneficiant chunks of semisweet chocolate dispersed all through the dough. Right here too, the cookies ought to be tender sufficient, even when frozen, to not squeeze out the ice cream as if pressed between two agency plates.

General Winner

Finest Traditional Chocolate Wafer Ice Cream Sandwich: Crav’n

Besides our editorial director, Daniel, all our tasters thought Crav’n’s ice cream sandwich was fairly good. “That is good and really well-balanced,” our affiliate visuals director, Amanda, wrote. “The sandwich may very well be a bit softer, however that could be a me factor.” Our affiliate culinary editor, Laila, thought it was a “fairly nostalgic” ice cream sandwich with a “traditional vanilla ice cream taste,” and appreciated that the cookie tasted like chocolate. Our affiliate editorial director, Megan, and I each used “superb” to explain this sandwich, possible as a result of we deeply love ice cream and would fortunately eat ice cream it doesn’t matter what.

Finest Ice Cream Cookie Sandwich: Dealer Joe’s

Our workforce couldn’t agree on whether or not Dealer Joe’s Chic Ice Cream Sandwiches had been too candy or simply the correct amount of candy. Megan and Kelli each thought they had been too candy, however Laila and I discovered them to not be cloying. “A pleasant chunk, to be sincere,” Amanda famous. Our tasters appreciated that its vanilla taste did not style overly synthetic, although, as Daniel wrote, it was “not fairly artisan.” Whereas I assumed the cookie might have been chewier, the ice cream was by far the very best of all of the sandwiches we tasted.

Runners-Up

Traditional Chocolate Wafer Ice Cream Sandwiches

• Pleasant’s Friendwich Vanilla Ice Cream Sandwiches
• Fatboy Ice Cream Sandwiches, Premium Vanilla

Our editors liked the chocolate-forward cookies in Pleasant’s Pleasant Vanilla Ice Cream Sandwiches and thought the vanilla ice cream was good and creamy. “Cookie tastes like chocolate. Ice cream tastes like ice cream. My favourite thus far,” Megan wrote. “This jogged my memory of a traditional ice cream sandwich,” Laila wrote. Although Megan thought Fatboy’s Ice Cream Sandwich was “deeply synthetic tasting,” Daniel and I each liked the richness of the ice cream. “Wow, that’s buttery ice cream,” Daniel noticed. “I am undecided it is an actual taste, however…I sort of prefer it?” Fatboy’s ice cream sandwich was the one one I wished to eat from begin to end, and struck the Goldilocks zone for me: It was neither too candy nor too salty, with a cookie that was each sturdy and delicate.

Cookie Ice Cream Sandwich

• 365 by Entire Meals Market Milk & Cookies Ice Cream Sandwiches

Everybody agreed that 365 by Entire Meals Market’s Milk & Cookies Ice Cream Sandwiches had been an in depth second. “Taste is a wee bit higher right here than a number of the others, however the texture remains to be good,” Daniel wrote. “Tender cookie, ice cream nonetheless holds its kind.” Although Megan appreciated how this ice cream sandwich tasted, she would have most popular an ice cream sandwich with extra chocolate chips. 

The Contenders

Traditional Chocolate Wafer Ice Cream Sandwiches

• 365 by Entire Meals Market Natural Ice Cream Sandwiches
• Alden’s Natural Outdated College Vanilla Ice Cream Sandwiches
• Bowl & Basket Vanilla Ice Cream Sandwiche
• Crav’n Ice Cream Sandwiches
• Fatboy Ice Cream Sandwiches, Premium Vanilla
• Favourite Day Vanilla Ice Cream Sandwiches
• Pleasant’s Friendwich Vanilla Ice Cream Sandwiches
• Hood Vanilla Ice Cream Sandwiches
• Klondike Traditional Vanilla Ice Cream Sandwiches
• Nestlé Vanilla Ice Cream Sandwiches
• Cease & Store Ice Cream Sandwiches

Ice Cream Cookie Sandwiches

• 365 by Entire Meals Market Milk & Cookies Ice Cream Sandwiches
• Favourite Day Chocolate Chunk Ice Cream Sandwiches
• Pleasant’s Huge Chipper Authentic Ice Cream Cookie Sandwich
• The Authentic Chipwich, Vanilla Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Sandwiches
• Dealer Joe’s Chic Ice Cream Sandwiches

Key Takeaways and Conclusion

All the ice cream sandwiches we sampled had been packed to the brim with emulsifiers, stabilizers, and each synthetic and pure flavors. Stabilizers are to be anticipated in most mass-market ice cream sandwiches: the merchandise want to carry their kind, with the ice cream neatly centered between the wafers or cookies—one thing that’s practically unattainable to ensure given the freeze-thaw cycles frequent throughout transport from manufacturing unit to warehouse to retailer. Nobody needs to open an ice cream sandwich and discover the cookies half-submerged in {a partially} melted, then re-frozen, puddle of candy dairy.

Our winner, Crav’n Ice Cream Sandwiches, was considered one of 4 traditional chocolate wafer ice cream sandwiches that contained buttermilk, which can have offered it with a extra complicated dairy taste that many different contenders lacked. Each of our prime picks for the ice cream cookie sandwiches contained “naturally flavored” ice cream and, although they each had stabilizers within the type of guar gum and locust bean gum, neither contained mono and diglycerides, a typical stabilizer present in processed meals. 

It is vital to notice that our tasters had clear and particular preferences: Some editors would have most popular a firmer cookie, others a softer cookie. Some editors had been repulsed by synthetic vanilla, and others discovered it splendidly nostalgic. Finally, most of us can be glad to have any of those ice cream sandwiches, particularly on a sizzling summer time day. 

Our Testing Methodology

All style assessments are carried out with manufacturers utterly hidden and with out dialogue. Tasters style samples in random order. For instance, taster A might style pattern one first, whereas taster B will style pattern six first. That is to stop palate fatigue from unfairly giving anyone pattern a bonus. Tasters are requested to fill out tasting sheets, rating the samples in accordance with varied standards. All knowledge is tabulated and outcomes are calculated with no editorial enter to offer us essentially the most neutral illustration of precise outcomes potential.