I <3 Trader Joes

UPDATE: This quickly became and remains one of our family’s favorite ice creams…             5 1/2 years later. 

I just bought this ice cream for the first time a few days ago… the $5.99 per half gallon price pretty much scared me away from ever purchasing it or so I thought. I’m not sure what possessed me – probably because I was in a hurry and wasn’t paying attention to the price until it hit me later. However, in my opinion this is one of THE BEST tasting vanilla ice creams ever. It’s true, if I had to choose a favorite ice cream flavor it would be vanilla – especially homemade vanilla ice cream and this tastes like it was just churned in my kitchen. The bonus is, it’s a half gallon and my ice cream maker does not make that much at one time. In an effort to not over indulge and to maximize our budget I’m also sticking to the serving size (or less) stated on the package. The serving size for this ice cream is 1/2 cup which I’ve found to be pretty typical of most ice cream packaging. What is not typical is the 1/2 gallon size… that used to be the norm, now most of the big brands now sell smaller cartons. In this instance, there are 16, 1/2 cup servings per 1/2 gallon which breaks down to about 37 cents per serving. That’s a lot less than a fancy ice cream shop would charge per scoop.

I topped this ice cream with the 2-ingredient DIY Magic Shell and served it inside of these JOY waffle cups/bowl.

Since I don’t have a cone maker (yet)** the only option was to purchase pre-packaged. I was concerned that there may be a few broken bowls, but they were packaged extremely well and non were broken. Each treat cost less than 60 cents per serving.

**UPDATE: I’ve added a waffle ice cream cone maker to my collection of appliances.