Store-bought vanilla ice cream??

[Melman]

Shhh....on the Cooks Illustrated website, they have an article about the best store-bought vanilla ice cream. Could someone who's a subscriber possibly let us know which brands they picked at the top???
Thanks...

[wallycat]

Haagan-dazs, breyers, and ben and jerrys ....consumer reports did a study too :D

I don't like the B&J...tooo fakey/vanillay taste to me.

Haagan-dazs is my NEW ALL TIME FAVORITE...coffee flavor, vanilla, chocolate AND strawberry :D :D ;)

[ChristieinMB]

Breyers Vanilla Bean is my favorite, of course that was pre-Cuisinart ice cream maker ownership.
Christie

[Melman]

Thanks for sharing the info.
;-)

We have a culinary arts program at the college where I work. During the summer, they have buffets and invite the rest of the college to attend ($6 per person). This past week was called American Regional (something like that). My absolutely favorite item was the homemade ice cream! They had pistachio when we went through the first time, and we each got a small portion. After the line disappeared, we went back for another taste...they has swapped it for chocolate. Both flavors were incredible!! It's really hard to beat that HIGH-FAT homemade stuff! :-)

[CKL]

I like Breyers Vanilla when I buy store-bought (trying to get motivated to get past homemade mint & chocolate chip but its too darned good).

I think they've got one or two types? I always get the all-natural one.

Mmmm. Its ice cream season. (Though I'm hard pressed to think of when it isn't...)

CK

[bekki]

Bryers makes a terrific light (4 gms fat/serving) vanilla and french vanilla. I just bought some, and couldn't tell much of a difference!

[Jill123]

They picked the Dreamery vanilla as #1. (It comes in those little Ben & Jerry-sized containers -- a pint?)

[AD]

I believe it was chocolate ice cream for which Haagen-Dazs was rated number one.

[wallycat]

here's the cook's illustrated story on vanilla ice-cream from last year...

Big-Name Vanilla Ice Creams Fail to Sweep Tasting.
Our panel favors “fresh,” “clean” taste over “overwhelmingly vanilla” flavors.

anilla ice cream may be plain, but in the ice cream world, it remains the force to be reckoned with, hoarding 29 percent of the industry’s $20 billion annual sales. Its closest rival, chocolate, lays claim to a paltry 8.9 percent. But when it comes to buying vanilla, there are two sides to the bean: Philadelphia-style, made from a milk or cream base, and French-style (often sold under the name “custard-style” or “French vanilla” and sometimes just “vanilla”), made from a precooked custard base that includes egg yolks in the mix. This tasting focused exclusively on the more decadent French-style vanilla ice creams, the style preferred in a Cook’s taste test conducted for the July/August 1994 issue.
We first tackled the question of what defines an ice cream as “all natural” and whether this would have any impact on the results of the tasting. The surprising answer is that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has no regulations concerning “all natural” labeling of ice cream. Given the lack of guidance by the FDA, we decided to investigate two areas—the use of stabilizers and the type of flavoring—to see if they would affect our results.

Adding Stability, Trapping Flavor
Many ice cream manufacturers add stabilizers—most often carrageenan gum or guar gum—to prevent “heat shock,” an industry term for the degradation in texture caused by partial melting and refreezing. This happens when ice cream is subjected to extreme temperature changes during transit to the supermarket or when an ice cream case goes through its self-defrosting cycle. Gum additives stabilize ice cream by trapping water in the frozen mass and slowing down the growth of ice crystals during melting and refreezing.
We thought that the presence of stabilizers might affect our test results. To our surprise, this was not the case. Our top two brands, Edy’s Dreamery and Double Rainbow, use stabilizers. Next we tackled the issue of vanilla flavoring.
Three types of vanilla are used to make vanilla ice cream: vanilla bean specks made from ground vanilla pods, natural vanilla extract, and artificial vanilla flavor. Using vanilla specks in ice cream is a popular technique manufacturers often use to convey to consumers the idea of naturalness or a home-style approach. However, while vanilla beans, which come from the inside of the vanilla pod, carry plenty of flavor, the little black flecks that come from grinding up vanilla pods contribute more to the ice cream’s appearance than its flavor. So the presence of flecks of “vanilla” in a commercial ice cream is no indication of quality or taste. Vanilla extract and artificial vanilla flavor are what determine the flavor. (In fact, the top two brands in our tasting do not use ground vanilla pods.)
Natural vanilla extract is made by steeping chopped vanilla beans in an alcohol and water solution. According to FDA guidelines, only ice creams made with natural vanilla extract or naturally derived vanilla flavor can be labeled “vanilla ice cream.” The label “vanilla-flavored ice cream” indicates that the ice cream in question was made with a combination of natural vanilla extract or flavor and artificial vanilla flavor. Artificial vanilla flavor is made from vanillin, a product extracted from conifer wood pulp that has been chemically rinsed. Blue Bell was the only brand in the tasting that contained artificial vanilla flavor, and it rated smack-dab in the middle, thus negating any link between natural flavoring agents and superior flavor. While tasters described Blue Bell ice cream as “cloyingly sweet” and “fleeting on the tongue,” its use of artificial vanilla did not automatically relegate it to the bottom of the heap.
In fact, tasters took greater issue with several “naturally flavored” brands—including Häagen-Dazs, Ben & Jerry’s, and Edy’s Grand—for tasting “artificial” and “boozy.” To help explain this odd result we contacted Bruce Tharp, an independent ice cream consultant based in Wayne, Pa. He explained that perceived artificial and alcohol flavors are often caused by the quantity of vanilla extract added to the ice cream. That is, the more extract, the more likely one is to taste the alcohol. Although it’s impossible to confirm this theory (manufacturers won’t release their recipes to the public), it was clear that the absence of stabilizers and use of natural flavorings were not reliable indicators of a great-tasting ice cream.

Butterfat and Overrun
Next up was the issue of butterfat. A natural byproduct of milk, butterfat, sometimes also called milk fat, is a coveted addition to an ice cream’s list of ingredients, contributing to smooth texture, rich flavor, and structure. By law, an ice cream can’t be called an ice cream unless its prefrozen mix contains a minimum of 10 percent butterfat. Of the ice creams we tasted, butterfat content ranged from 10 to 16 percent and, in general, the higher the butterfat content, the higher the ice cream rated. Our two top-rated ice creams had butterfat contents of 14.5 percent (Edy’s Dreamery) and 15 percent (Double Rainbow). The two lowest rated brands had butterfat contents between 10 and 13 percent. All commercial ice cream makers also add air to the mix. Oddly enough, this helps to provide structure, as the air cells are distributed evenly throughout the frozen mass. The air that is thus incorporated into ice cream is called overrun—without it, the ice cream would look more like an ice cube. But if used to excess, added air can compromise the ice cream’s texture, making it pillowy and light. In addition, an ice cream with a high overrun will melt faster than one with a low overrun. This is because there is less frozen mass to melt, and when there is less frozen mass, warm air can penetrate the ice cream more quickly.
Realizing that ice cream with more air has more volume and can be sold in a larger package for more money, the FDA has set a minimum weight of 41/2 pounds to the gallon for churned ice cream. This indirectly sets a limit on the amount of air that can be incorporated, since an ice cream that incorporates too much air during the churning process will weigh less than 41/2 pounds. Essentially, what all this means is that an ice cream’s volume cannot be increased by more than 100 percent through the addition of air. To find out the estimated overrun in the ice creams we sampled, we used a simple calculation that takes into consideration the weight of the ice cream and the weight of the liquid ice cream mix before it is frozen. While the top two ice creams had low overruns of 21 and 26 percent, our third favorite had a whopping 93.5 percent overrun. Furthermore, the two last-place ice creams had very different overruns—26 percent and 100 percent (we tested many samples of Edy’s Grand and the overrun always came in at 100 percent). Our conclusion? In general, low overrun is preferable, although butterfat content is a better measure of quality. (We also noted that some tasters like high-overrun ice creams—it is, to some degree, a matter of personal preference.)
The last component we researched was emulsifiers, such as mono- and diglycerides, used to control the behavior of fat in ice cream by preventing it from separating out from the ice cream mass. These emulsifiers give an ice cream rigidity and strength, so even if it doesn’t have much butterfat or added gums, the ice cream will maintain its round, scooped shape for a prolonged period of time. The only ice cream in our tasting with emulsifiers was also the least favored sample: Edy’s Grand. So, according to our taste test, it seems that emulsifiers are not desirable.

What to Buy?
The winner of our tasting, Edy’s Dreamery, was described as “rich and velvety,” with a “fresh” and “clean” finish. It uses natural flavors as well as stabilizers, has a butterfat content of 14.5 percent, and an estimated overrun of 21 percent. Tasters remarked that its texture was particularly smooth and that it was lighter and softer than other samples. Tasters also responded well to the “clean,” “fresh” flavor of our second-place finisher, Double Rainbow. The statistics on this brand are almost identical to those on our winner—natural flavors, stabilizers, 15 percent butterfat, and 26 percent estimated overrun.
Tasters on our 1994 panel crowned Breyer’s a winner among supermarket brands sold in half-gallons, so we were not surprised that it placed third in this tasting. Our panelists particularly liked the home-style, “eggy” taste of this product. It even outranked Häagen-Dazs and Ben & Jerry’s! (Not bad for an ice cream that’s almost 50 percent air—it has a 93.5 percent estimated overrun.)
The real news here is the fourth-place showing of Häagen-Dazs and the seventh-place showing of Ben & Jerry’s, out of eight brands sampled. Both of these well-known brands advertise their quality ingredients, have low overruns, and have moderate to high butterfat contents. (Häagen-Dazs is a particularly perplexing case, with a high-end 16 percent butterfat content, natural flavors, a low overrun of 20 percent, and no stabilizers. Judging from the printing on the package, it looks like a winner.) Tasters found the flavor of the Häagen-Dazs and the Ben & Jerry’s to be “artificial” and “chemical,” with “alcohol” undertones. Is this a function of too much vanilla? Perhaps, but since this information is confidential, we can only hazard a guess.
What we were able to learn after gorging on so much ice cream is that, at least for our tasters, balance is more important than bravado. Clean vanilla flavor and a high butterfat content made more of a difference to us than the presence of stabilizers.

September, 2001
Original article and recipes by Raquel Pelzel

[Svadhisthana]

I know this information is only helpful to a minority but, the "Schnucks" grocery store brand vanilla (low-fat no less!) is reallllllllly good. I like it more than any of the name brands.

[jena_lockwood]

Wallycat-

Are you a subscriber to the CI website? If so, could you post the Flourless Chocolate Cake recipe? (I mentioned it on the Great Bakeoff thread) I had made it a while back and tossed the printed copy I had, what was I thinking?

TIA!
-jena

[wallycat]

Jena_lockwood,
I'm sorry I don't subscribe (I know a few people on the bb do...maybe someone will verify if this is correct)...I found this using a search on the internet:

The Ultimate Flourless Chocolate Cake
by Alice Medrich
Alice's Recipe using Scharffen Berger Couverture

This recipe originally appeared in Cook's Illustrated magazine. In the course of developing the recipe for the article, I tested it with the then-brand-new Scharffen Berger 70%. I found it superb.

Ingredients:
8 large cold eggs
1 pound Scharffen Berger 70% Bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
8 ounce unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch chunks
1/4 cup strong coffee or liqueur, optional
Confectioners' sugar or cocoa, optional for decoration

Equipment:
an 8 inch springform pan


1. Position the oven rack to the lower third of the oven (lower center) and preheat to 325 degrees. Line the bottom of the pan with parchment paper and grease the sides. Set the pan on a wide sheet of heavy duty foil and wrap the foil up the sides without tearing it. Set the pan in a larger baking pan or a roasting pan. Bring a kettle of water to a boil.

2. Use a hand held mixer (preferably) to beat the eggs at high speed for 5 minutes until the volume of the eggs doubles to approximately 1 quart. If you have to use a heavy duty mixer such as a Kitchen Aid, use the whisk attachment and speed 6, beating to the same volume which will tack about the same amount of time.

3. Meanwhile melt the chocolate and butter (with liquor or coffee if you are using it) in a large heat proof bowl either set in a pan of barely simmer water or in the microwave at 50% power for 4-6 minutes, stirring frequently until the mixture is smooth and warm (about 115 degrees).

4. Fold 1/3 of the egg foam into the chocolate mixture with a large rubber spatula until just a few streak of egg are still visible; fold in half of the remaining foam likewise. Fold the remaining foam into the batter until completely incorporated.

5. Scrape the batter into the prepared spring form and smooth the surface. Set the roasting pan on the oven rack and pour in enough boiling water into it to come about halfway up the side of the springform. Bake until the cake has risen slightly, edges are just beginning to set, a thin glazed crust (like a brownie) has formed on the surface, and an instant read thermometer inserted halfway into the center of the cake registers 140 degrees, 22-25 minutes. Remove the springform pan from the water bath and set on a wire rack. Cool to room temperature. Cover and refrigerate overnight to mellow. Cake can be kept covered and refrigerated up to 4 days.

6. About 30 minutes before serving, remove the springform pan sides, invert the cake on a sheet of waxed paper, peel off parchment pan liner, and turn cake right side up on a serving platter. Sieve lightly with cocoa or confectioners' sugar if desired. Serve with whipped cream and raspberry sauce if desired.

[Gilgamesh37]

Okay, I know this thread was about store bought vanilla, but just in case, for those of you with ice cream makers, here is our house vanilla, after much trial and error. This is NOT light (and I have been threatened to not mess with it, lest my adored live-in BF pack his belongings and go) but it is good, and if you're immuno-suppressed, an added benefit is it contains no eggs, cooked or otherwise.

Kick A$$ Simple Vanilla

2 cups heavy cream, well chilled
1 cup whole milk, well chilled
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla (the real stuff--it's the only flavor on the floor here, so imitation stands out as fake-y)

Place ingredients in large bowl and whisk until combined. Process in ice cream maker according to directions.

[Curleytop]

I buy the Breyers LIGHT vanilla all the time. I also buy Dryers
Grand LIGHT Chocolate Fudge Mouise (sp?). Don't waste my time with making those in the Icecream maker. Both are sooo good, I could not duplicate them. DH loves Strawberry icecream, and you can't get that in lowfat. I make a great strawberry frozen yogurt. Use the same recipe for all berry frozen yogurts. I have posted the recipe before.

[SusanT]

Svadhisthana - thanks for the tip on Schucks. They just opened in my hometown. I'll check out their vanilla ice cream.

Consumer Reports picked Hagen Daas Belgian Chocolate as their #1 pick. It's supposed to have a great bittersweet taste. Hmmmm....

Thanks!