Wilder Shaw / Cheapism
It's not always worth heading over to an ice cream shop if you're in need of a frozen treat, and stocking them in your freezer is always the height of convenience. But if you're strolling the grocery store frozen section, what kind of ice cream cones are best?
I tried eight different ice cream drumsticks and pitted them against one another for a taste test. From Trader Joe's to Nestlé, here are the best grocery store drumsticks you can buy.
$3.99 from Trader Joe's
There are few things that Trader Joe's does better than this. A box of Hold the Cones might just be the holiest grail at a grocery store filled with holy grails.
No notes at all on these babies. They're uncomplicated, tasty, and best of all, the serving size is three cones. Three! What a dream, to eat three straight ice cream cones. You won't do better than these.
$7.48 from Walmart
It should come as no surprise to anybody that this is absolutely incredible. There’s no conceivable way this could have gone wrong. We've got ice cream that tastes like OREO frosting, crunchy pieces of cookie, and a tasty chocolate cone, culminating in a flavor that legitimately tastes like the cookie we all know and love. I'm not sure how anything else was expected to compete.
$4.98 from Walmart
What delightful treats these are. Simplicity is everything, and with these semi-mini cones, all you need is a chocolate shell with vanilla ice cream. In that situation, the ingredients need to speak for themselves, and they do here. The vanilla ice cream is cool and creamy and the chocolate is, like, good chocolate with a surprising depth of flavor. I'd love to stock my freezer with these again.
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Available from Instacart
This is the best of the four "classic" drumsticks that I tasted. All of them were essentially the same setup: a vanilla ice cream cone, coated in chocolate, and covered in peanuts. Blue Ribbon differs slightly in that there are cone pieces mixed in with the peanut topping.
Blue Ribbon's ingredient quality is superior to the others across the board. Better chocolate, better ice cream, better peanuts (helped greatly by the crunchy cone pieces), and probably the best frozen waffle cone of any other product.
The only problem with this cone (and all of the others of its kind) is that you're in for a mess. It's nearly impossible to bite through the peanut topping without a dusting of crumbs and peanuts all over your table or floor. It's like opening a Nature Valley bar: Delicious and dangerous.
$6.99 from Target
If I was a chocoholic, this would be my jam. I'm not though, and for me it's far too decadent. Häagen-Dazs probably has some of the best ice cream you can find in the frozen section, but with the chocolate sauce, chocolate ice cream, and chocolate curls, I found myself gasping for air after a single bite.
Another matter of personal preference is that the cone is a butter cookie. It tastes just like those European butter cookies that come in a big tin. I'd so much rather have a typical cone with ice cream.
Related: The Absolute Best Popsicles To Buy From the Grocery Store (and the Ones To Skip)
Available from Instacart
Only a few degrees underneath the Blue Ribbon cones are Kemps, which still put me at odds with those damn peanuts. These are all just so hard to eat. Why are we doing this? Why can’t we just stick the peanuts underneath the chocolate and on top of the ice cream?
Available from Instacart
There's some decent vanilla ice cream inside here, but I just don't stand a chance against that peanut topping. It's a formidable enemy that threatens every bite you take. This was the messiest drumstick I ate by far. I'm at a loss with these things. Why does anybody want this?
$7.48 from Walmart
At the lowest tier of the drumsticks, you'll find Nestlé, which is a surprise considering this is probably the first one we all think of. They're just ... cheap. Here at Cheapism, we don't turn our noses up at cheap things, but in Nestlé's case, we deserve better. The bland ice cream has an incredibly weird texture, and the peanuts feel rigged like land mines to explode into messy bits. No thanks.
