Chocolate ice cream party

What happens when a bunch of food bloggers get together?

Yes – there’s food – but occasionally we get a bright idea:

“Let’s have an ice cream tasting party.”

“Yes! We could all buy a tub of ice cream and rank them.”

“Okay, let’s do it!”

And so the ice cream tasting party was born.


Adrian graciously offered to host, and on a sunny Saturday Alastair and I descended upon his freezer with our tub of ice cream, along with April and L, Haz and Gazman, plus Kat and Josh.

Adrian knows us all well and had purchased pig tattoos. Oink oink!

We couldn’t just dig straight into dessert, so A-Dawg and CnC cooked us a fantastic Filipino inspired bbq for lunch: sausage, ribs, pork skewers, and chicken wings.

Kat made a salad – specifically telling us that it would be made from vegetables (the Thai interpretation of salad is rather loose) plus a tasty vermicelli dish.

For dessert and in addition to ice cream, April made us chocolate peanut butter brownies. MHMMMM.

After which it was time for the main event. Which ice cream would reign supreme? I had suggested a blind tasting, which led to Adrian buying a blindfold – not quite what I meant by blind!

We did away with the blindfold and instead roped in Kat’s husband Josh to dish out the ice cream so we wouldn’t know what brand we were tasting.

When buying the ice cream, our main rule was that added bits were okay, but the base flavour had to be plain chocolate e.g. mint chocolate chip wouldn’t have been allowed, but chocolate chip was okay.

We all managed to buy different brands, ending up with six: Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie, NZ Natural Chocolate Ecstasy, Kohu Road Dark Chocolate, Connoisseur Belgian Chocolate, Movenpick Swiss Chocolate, and Gundowring Chocolate.

And then we got to eating and scoring. After tasting the first one I realised we should’ve purchased a cheap no name brand ice cream to eat first and use as a base line. Next time!

After tasting them all, we added up our rankings. And they were a bit of a surprise. Can you guess which one we liked the most? And which one the least?

1st: Ben and Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie

Scoring 50.5/60, we all really liked the Ben and Jerry’s. The chewy fudge brownie bits really added to the enjoyment of it, and it had a relatively dark chocolate flavour. But if it hadn’t had the fudge brownie, I’m not sure if we would’ve scored it so highly.

2nd: Gundowring Chocolate

With a score of 49/50, it was second. It had a mildly milky chocolate flavour, not too sweet, with a very soft and mousse like texture.

3rd: Kohu Road Dark Chocolate

This just scraped into third place with a score of 45.5/60. I noted that it had the darkest flavour, with a very smooth texture and wasn’t too thick.

4th: Connoisseur Belgian Chocolate

The Connoisseur was our dark horse – I’m pretty sure it was the cheapest tub and since it only just inched into fourth, it represented the best value. It scored 45/60 and was fairly smooth and nicely dark.

5th: NZ Natural Chocolate Ecstasy

The NZ Natural was the one I personally liked the least, but others scored it slightly higher, so it came fifth with a score of 34/60. I found it slightly ice-y – unforgivable in quality ice cream. It was also really chewy, with a sweet milk chocolate flavour.

6th: Movenpick Swiss Chocolate

And finally, poor Movenpick received the lowest score: 33/60. It had a slightly darker chocolate flavour than the NZ Natural, but the texture was very thick and very chewy – like lots of thickener had been added.

And as if we hadn’t eaten enough sugar, Adrian even sent home with show bags. Awww! 🙂

Super fun times, although I did leave with a sugar headache. Ah, the things we do for science (hah!).

Any suggestions for another food item we can taste test next?