Coles, Aldi ice cream from $6.50 beats gourmet brand in CHOICE taste test

Nothing says ‘Aussie summer’ quite like a delicious, dribbly ice cream on a hot and sweaty day. However, with the cost of living remaining stubbornly high, there’s less of the fancy gelato variety and more of the affordable supermarket-tub-kind on the menu for most of us this year.

Fortunately, CHOICE has done a taste test for us, reviewing 20 vanilla ice creams from the freezer aisles of various supermarkets and ranking them for taste and value for money. Interestingly, a Coles own-brand and an Aldi favourite - both of which retail for under $8 - beat other more ‘gourmet’ and high-end brands to come out on top.

“Our experts tasted the ice cream samples blind in a randomised order, and rated the ice creams on appearance, smell, taste, texture, vanilla strength and balance of flavour,” CHOICE expert Pru Engel tells Yahoo Lifestyle.

“It was definitely surprising that some of the more expensive gourmet brands were outperformed in our taste test by cheaper supermarket own-label products, but this is something we sometimes see in our testing.

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“We know supermarkets have invested a lot in their own-brand products and they can often be excellent quality and offer great value for consumers.”

So, which ice-cream should you be rushing to your local supermarket for this summer? Read on.

The best-tasting vanilla ice cream

The CHOICE team ranked the Coles Vanilla Bean 1L ice cream, which will set you back $6.50, as their number one pick. It contains real vanilla bean seeds - which is bizarrely not an ingredient in the majority of vanilla ice creams you’ll find on the shelf - and is made in Australia from mostly Australian ingredients.

It’s also received plenty of glowing consumer reviews on Product Review with one person saying, “You can see the masses of black vanilla bean seeding throughout the ice cream,” while another writes, “I love the vanilla bean… the price is excellent and so is the ice cream”.

A third says it’s “better than the brands. Creamy, tasty and looks like it still uses a little actual vanilla not just flavour. I prefer it over both Connoisseur and Sara Lee”.

A $7.99 Aldi winner: 'Creamy and delicious'

Outperforming higher-brow brands like Connoisseur, Haagen-Dazs, Maggie Beer and Gelato Messina in CHOICE’s taste test, was Aldi’s $7.99 Kapiti Vanilla Bean 1L ice cream, which came in second place.

Showing that you can get good ingredients even at a budget price, this product is also made with real vanilla bean seeds, which you can see scattered throughout, as well as fresh cream and whole milk.

As with many Aldi favourites, the Kapiti Vanilla Bean has its own cult following among shoppers with many raving about in Facebook groups like Aldi Fans Australia, where one shopper says, “Kapiti New Zealand. Best ice cream at Aldi.”

“Hands down the best ice cream for scooping is Kapiti Vanilla Bean, so creamy and delicious. Made in New Zealand and top quality product,” says another customer, while in the Aldi Mums Facebook group, someone else writes, “It’s actual ice cream (rather than iced dessert) and it was so good! Very rich.”

In fact, the Kapiti ice cream is able to be marketed as an ‘ice cream’ because it has a total fat content of 14.7 percent which is above the minimum of 10 percent milk fat. By comparison, Connoisseur’s Classic Vanilla has a 13.7 percent total fat content and the Coles Vanilla Bean has 12 percent.

Classic budget vanilla no longer considered ‘ice cream’

Meanwhile, a long-standing Aussie favourite and budget go-to, Streets’ Blue Ribbon Classic Vanilla, has recently sparked controversy with many shoppers after it made changes to its recipe.

The product, which is price locked at $6.50 at Aldi, Coles and Woolies, now contains vegetable oil which has lowered its overall milk fat content to just 7 percent, meaning it is now classified as a ‘vanilla flavoured frozen dairy dessert’ rather than an ice cream.

Streets’ parent company Unilever, told Yahoo Lifestyle earlier this year that the recipe change was aimed at creating a smoother texture and reducing shrinkage in the freezer, however shoppers have been vocal in their disapproval of the change.

One person on Product Review writes, “Why is it foamy? The texture is wrong and it's super soft, it's not like it used to be.”

Others say, “New recipe is awful. No longer the creamy ice cream it once was,” and “New recipe fail! No creaminess, too sugary, very frothy texture. Another customer lost forever.”

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Brisbane TikToker Danni Rodgers and her partner recently did a blind taste test of three budget vanilla options - Blue Ribbon, Bulla Creamy Classics and Peters - and both of them ranked the Blue Ribbon last. “RIP Blue Ribbon!”, Dannii exclaims in the video, to which her partner adds, “Now we’ve got a whole tub of the s**t.”

Interestingly, the previous Blue Ribbon Vanilla recipe had been ranked third in CHOICE’s blind taste test. Check out their entire list here.

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