Freezer Aisles Try To Match Ice Cream Truck

Rice Protein Concentrate  The variety was dizzying. Just looking at all the stickers, signsand placards plastered to the side of your average independent icecream purveyor could give you a heck of a headache. These days, ice cream trucks are still around, although they're abit harder to find. With the price of gas what it is, it's a safebet prices will be blowing up faster than the waistlines offrequent customers. Of course, if the prices get too high, you canalways just go to the grocery store. Unless you have kids, you probably haven't looked lately at thesection of the frozen desserts case where the Hard Ice Cream Machine noveltiesare sold. Almost everything you used to get from that rovingpurveyor of quiescently frozen confections is now available inconvenient multi-packs. Best of all, a six-pack will cost you aboutthe same as two from the ice cream man. Even Good Humor has made it to the freezer case, but more on thatlater. In this test, five adults tested each ice cream treat, awardingeach one 1 to 20 points. Each entry was judged on flavor,appearance and overall impression. Don't think of the ratings ascompetitive, as we weren't rating them in comparison to each other.Where two similar novelties were tasted, such as with the Drumstickand the Blue Bunny Champ cone, they were not tested in sequence. Breyer's Mrs. Field's Chocolate Chip Cookie Ice Cream Sandwich : 190 calories, 8 grams fat, 10 mg cholesterol, 125 mg sodium, 29grams carbs. Mrs. Field's cookies are great when you get them warm from a mallshop, but they don't quite make the transition to the freezersuccessfully. They were very hard to bite through, causing the icecream to squeeze out everywhere. The ice cream itself was verynondescript, with good creaminess but not much vanilla flavor.Final score: 76. Snickers Ice Cream Bar : 160 calories, 8 grams fat, 5 mg cholesterol, 55 mg sodium, 21grams total carbs. There have been numerous attempts over the years to translate candybars into ice cream form, with varying degrees of success. TheSnickers bar does the best job of mimicking its non-frozenoriginal, with good caramel and roasted peanuts. The only down notewas that some of the testers found the bar too heavily sweetoverall. Final score: 83. The Original Drumstick : 340 calories, 21 grams fat, 20 mg cholesterol, 90 mg sodium, 33grams carbs. This is the treat that's expanded American waistlines for years,and it's still the real deal. As ever, most of the nuts embedded inthe chocolate coating come off in the wrapper, and as ever the bestbite is the last one, when you get the chocolate glob at the bottomof the cone. The chocolate flavor wasn't quite as top-notch as someof the other treats, but this one still notched a final score of93. Eskimo Pie Dark Chocolate Bar : 160 calories, 11 grams fat, 15 mg cholesterol, 35 mg sodium, 14grams carbs. Eskimo Pie is one of the iconic names in the frozen treat business,which makes this treat a bit puzzling. The "dark" chocolate waswaxy, with very little actual chocolate flavor. The ice cream hadgreat texture, but not much in the way of any identifying taste ofits own. Final score: 65. Original Klondike Bar : 250 calories, 17 grams fat, 20 mg cholesterol, 55 mg sodium, 22grams carbs. As the old commercial goes, "What would you do for a Klondike bar?"Well, in this case, the testers would pass up several of the otherofferings in the test for this simple-but-good confection. The icecream is excellent, and the chocolate coating is very tasty. Theonly real problem is mechanical: It's almost impossible to finishone without the last few bites dribbling all over your hands. Finalscore: 91. Molli-Cool Chocolate Fusion : 130 calories, 7 grams fat, 20 mg cholesterol, 60 mg sodium, 12grams carbs.