We all have a favorite ice cream flavor. Sure, we’ll try a new scoop every now and then, venturing into the wilds of sweet meets savory, but there’s always that one we crave above the rest. Is there any way to pick one, unequivocal best?
No, probably not. Luckily, the people over at Ranker love debating matters of taste. They asked their users to rank their favorite ice cream flavors and 91,000 votes later a solid top ten emerged. It’s hard to argue with the tastiness of these picks because… well, we’re talking about ice cream here. So it’s all kinda awesome. Let’s dive in…
10. PEANUT BUTTER CUP
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Chocolate, peanut butter, and ice cream together at last. Let’s all face it, we have Dairy Queen Blizzards to thank for this concoction of wonder foods into a single wonderful ice cream. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups with vanilla ice cream will always have a place in our hearts.
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9. COFFEE
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Somehow coffee ice cream sounds like something yuppies ate in the go-go 90s when Seattle rock was all the rage and Starbucks was starting to permeate every corner of the country. Still though, a nice caffeine pick me up while indulging in ice cream is kinda of a win, win.
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8. ROCKY ROAD
This is a classic from the Dreyers ice cream empire, mixing nuts (usually almonds or walnuts) and mini-marshmallows into chocolate ice cream. Today it usually has chunks of chocolate as well, but not always. It’s a textural high water mark in the ice cream flavor world. And who knew marshmallows would taste so good in ice cream?!?
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7. FRENCH VANILLA
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French Vanilla feels more like a starter ingredient for an ice cream dessert or, at the very least, a fruit pie pairing. It doesn’t feel like the main show of any ice cream event. Yet, here it is at number seven. Although, we’d probably prefer a nice Bourbon or Tahitian vanilla to really amp up the flavor (they wrote, with pinkies held in the air, snobbishly).
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6. CHOCOLATE CHIP
Ah, the good ol’ classic of putting some chocolate chips in a vanilla ice cream (see: vanilla is a building block). This one has a nice crunch to it thanks to the frozen bits of chocolate adding new dimensions to the vanilla.
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5. STRAWBERRY
Shockingly strawberry is the only fruit-based ice cream that made the cut? No mango. No banana. No blackberry, marionberry, or snozzberry! Fair enough. You can’t beat a nice, fresh strawberry ice cream to lighten up a summer day. Plus it’s fruit — that’s healthy, right?
4. MINT CHOCOLATE CHIP
More chocolate chips, except this time we’re dealing with some serious flavor by tossing the vanilla and bringing in green mint. This one is a powerhouse of flavors with the crunchy and slightly bitter dark chocolate balancing nicely with the menthol sweetness of mint. And it’s green. That’s just more fun.
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3. VANILLA
Regular ol’ vanilla ranks at number three! Which, again, okay if you’re building up to something like a pie a la mode or a nice Neapolitan ice cream triptych of vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry. On its own, it better be the best and most vanilla vanilla we’ve ever tasted to live up to this high of a ranking. (Now get us some malted, salted, vanilla and we can talk.)
2. CHOCOLATE
A stone-cold classic sits at number two. Chocolate ice cream is also a building block for many a great ice cream flavors. But on its own, it’s still chocolate. And chocolate in ice cream is just perfect.
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1. COOKIES AND CREAM
Funnily enough, number one is another one that feels like there’s a fair amount of debt owed to the DQ Blizzard — in this case, of the Oreo persuasion. Cookies and Cream is always basically just Oreo ice cream without the branding. The chocolate cookie crunch and creamy sugar filling make for a topnotch ice cream that’s easy to accept as the best ice cream out there.
Unless you’ve been to Salt & Straw. Then you know better.
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