The Best Store-Bought Vanilla Ice Cream Brand is Available in Massachusetts

July is National Ice Cream Month. It's fitting that National Ice Cream Month is during one of the hottest months of the year. There's nothing like grabbing a scoop or two or three during a hot, summer day.

With National Ice Cream Month comes National Ice Cream Day, which this year was on July 19. Did you know that today (July 23) is National Vanilla Ice Cream Day? Now, some may think that vanilla ice cream is boring or simple, but according to Southern Living, vanilla remains the country's top choice when it comes to favorite ice cream flavors.

If you plan on celebrating National Vanilla Ice Cream Day today and plan on grabbing a container from the local grocery store on the way home from work, you may have a favorite brand already in mind, but if you are looking for another option or a suggestion, allrecipes.com tested seven different vanilla ice cream brands, and the top pick is available in most grocery stores throughout Massachusetts.

According to the author of the article, she only tested regular vanilla ice cream flavors, no offshoot vanilla flavors like vanilla-bean or anything like that. In addition, her methods of testing the ice cream brands consisted of having someone else scoop the ice cream into bowls so that there was no bias in the decision-making. Both flavor and texture were taken into account when ranking the ice cream brands.

The top pick according to allrecipes.com was Häagen-Dazs, which, as I said earlier, is easily accessible. You can get it pretty much anywhere throughout Massachusetts...Pittsfield, Worcester, Boston, you name it, they have it. The author of the article had the following to say about Häagen-Dazs' vanilla flavor.

Not only did it deliver on texture and creaminess, but it had the best vanilla flavor out of all of the brands. Plus, it was perfectly sweet, and we never got tired of tasting it.

The two runners up included Ben & Jerry's (#2) and Breyers (#3). You can view the entire list of all seven ice cream brands and why they ranked the way they did by going here.