After eating 16 different ice cream sandwiches, we're definitely all screaming.
In a Nutshell
We taste-tested 16 brands of ice cream sandwiches you're likely to find at your local grocery store: 11 brands of classic chocolate wafer ice cream sandwiches and five brands of ice cream cookie sandwiches. To find the very best one in each category, we tasted each without knowing which brand was which. Our winners are Crav'n and Trader Joe's.
Every summer, I make myself a to-eat list. It often involves things like biting into a sweet, juicy peach over the sink, slicing into a plump and perfectly ripe tomato , and quickly inhaling an ice cream sandwich before it melts under the hot sun. While I love ice cream in any and all forms, there's something particularly appealing and nostalgic about vanilla ice cream sandwiched between two chocolate wafers, all neatly wrapped in foil or parchment. The question is: Which ice cream sandwiches are worth buying?
To find the very best ice cream sandwiches, our editors taste-tested 16 different brands you're likely to find at your local grocery store. We sampled 11 brands of classic chocolate wafer ice cream sandwiches and five brands of ice cream cookie sandwiches. We tasted them in random order without knowing which was which, and sampled the classic sandwiches and cookie sandwiches in separate batches to avoid comparing apples to oranges.
We tabulated the results and crowned an overall winner for each category, along with several other worthy contenders we'd be happy to keep in our freezer at home.
The Criteria
A classic ice cream sandwich should consist of luxuriously creamy vanilla ice cream wedged between firm yet moist chocolate wafers. The ice cream should taste balanced; it should not be cloyingly sweet, and it should not be so foamy that it feels like you're eating air. The wafers should be pleasantly bittersweet with rich notes of cocoa, and though they have to be sturdy enough to encase the ice cream, they should not be brittle or dry—the should be substantive but still yield enough that the ice cream doesn't get squished out when you bite down.
An ice cream cookie sandwich should also contain rich, flavorful vanilla ice cream . The cookies should be nice and chewy, with generous chunks of semisweet chocolate dispersed throughout the dough. Here too, the cookies should be tender enough, even when frozen, to not squeeze out the ice cream as if pressed between two firm plates.
Overall Winner
Best Classic Chocolate Wafer Ice Cream Sandwich: Crav'n
Except our editorial director, Daniel , all our tasters thought Crav'n's ice cream sandwich was pretty good. "This is nice and very well-balanced," our associate visuals director, Amanda , wrote. "The sandwich could be a bit softer, but that might be a me thing." Our associate culinary editor, Laila , thought it was a "pretty nostalgic" ice cream sandwich with a "classic vanilla ice cream flavor," and appreciated that the cookie tasted like chocolate. Our associate editorial director, Megan , and I both used "fine" to describe this sandwich, likely because we deeply love ice cream and would happily eat ice cream no matter what.
Best Ice Cream Cookie Sandwich: Trader Joe's
Our team could not agree on whether Trader Joe's Sublime Ice Cream Sandwiches were too sweet or just the right amount of sweet. Megan and Kelli both thought they were too sweet, but Laila and I found them not to be cloying. "A nice bite, to be honest," Amanda noted. Our tasters liked that its vanilla flavor didn't taste overly artificial, though, as Daniel wrote, it was "not quite artisan." While I thought the cookie could have been chewier, the ice cream was by far the best of all the sandwiches we tasted.
Runners-Up
Classic Chocolate Wafer Ice Cream Sandwiches
- Friendly's Friendwich Vanilla Ice Cream Sandwiches
- Fatboy Ice Cream Sandwiches, Premium Vanilla
Our editors loved the chocolate-forward cookies in Friendly's Friendly Vanilla Ice Cream Sandwiches and thought the vanilla ice cream was nice and creamy. "Cookie tastes like chocolate. Ice cream tastes like ice cream. My favorite so far," Megan wrote. "This reminded me of a classic ice cream sandwich," Laila wrote. Though Megan thought Fatboy's Ice Cream Sandwich was "deeply artificial tasting," Daniel and I both loved the richness of the ice cream. "Wow, that is buttery ice cream," Daniel observed. "I'm not sure it's a real flavor, but…I kind of like it?" Fatboy's ice cream sandwich was the only one I wanted to eat from start to finish, and struck the Goldilocks zone for me: It was neither too sweet nor too salty, with a cookie that was both sturdy and soft.
Cookie Ice Cream Sandwich
- 365 by Whole Foods Market Milk & Cookies Ice Cream Sandwiches
Everyone agreed that 365 by Whole Foods Market's Milk & Cookies Ice Cream Sandwiches were a close second. "Flavor is a wee bit better here than some of the others, but the texture is still good," Daniel wrote. "Tender cookie, ice cream still holds its form." Though Megan liked how this ice cream sandwich tasted, she would have preferred an ice cream sandwich with more chocolate chips .
The Contenders
Classic Chocolate Wafer Ice Cream Sandwiches
- 365 by Whole Foods Market Organic Ice Cream Sandwiches
- Alden's Organic Old School Vanilla Ice Cream Sandwiches
- Bowl & Basket Vanilla Ice Cream Sandwiche
- Crav'n Ice Cream Sandwiches
- Fatboy Ice Cream Sandwiches, Premium Vanilla
- Favorite Day Vanilla Ice Cream Sandwiches
- Friendly's Friendwich Vanilla Ice Cream Sandwiches
- Hood Vanilla Ice Cream Sandwiches
- Klondike Classic Vanilla Ice Cream Sandwiches
- Nestlé Vanilla Ice Cream Sandwiches
- Stop & Shop Ice Cream Sandwiches
Ice Cream Cookie Sandwiches
- 365 by Whole Foods Market Milk & Cookies Ice Cream Sandwiches
- Favorite Day Chocolate Chunk Ice Cream Sandwiches
- Friendly's Big Chipper Original Ice Cream Cookie Sandwich
- The Original Chipwich, Vanilla Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Sandwiches
- Trader Joe's Sublime Ice Cream Sandwiches
Key Takeaways and Conclusion
All of the ice cream sandwiches we sampled were packed to the brim with emulsifiers, stabilizers, and both artificial and natural flavors. Stabilizers are to be expected in most mass-market ice cream sandwiches: the products need to hold their form, with the ice cream neatly centered between the wafers or cookies—something that’s nearly impossible to guarantee given the freeze-thaw cycles common during shipping from factory to warehouse to store. No one wants to open an ice cream sandwich and find the cookies half-submerged in a partially melted, then re-frozen, puddle of sweet dairy.
Our winner, Crav'n Ice Cream Sandwiches, was one of four classic chocolate wafer ice cream sandwiches that contained buttermilk, which may have provided it with a more complex dairy flavor that many other contenders lacked. Both of our top picks for the ice cream cookie sandwiches contained "naturally flavored" ice cream and, though they both had stabilizers in the form of guar gum and locust bean gum, neither contained mono and diglycerides, a common stabilizer found in processed foods.
It's important to note that our tasters had clear and specific preferences: Some editors would have preferred a firmer cookie, others a softer cookie. Some editors were repulsed by artificial vanilla, and others found it wonderfully nostalgic. Ultimately, most of us would be happy to have any of these ice cream sandwiches, especially on a hot summer day.
Our Testing Methodology
All taste tests are conducted with brands completely hidden and without discussion. Tasters taste samples in random order. For example, taster A may taste sample one first, while taster B will taste sample six first. This is to prevent palate fatigue from unfairly giving any one sample an advantage. Tasters are asked to fill out tasting sheets, ranking the samples according to various criteria. All data is tabulated and results are calculated with no editorial input to give us the most impartial representation of actual results possible.
