ZingJ

• As a coffee and ice cream lover, I'm predisposed to love coffee-flavored ice cream.
• However, I've never tried many coffee flavors from popular ice cream brands.
• In honor of Ice Cream Month, I tried seven brands' coffee ice cream — my favorite was Turkey Hill.

I'm a coffee lover and an ice cream lover ... but coffee ice cream is surprisingly one of my blind spots.

So, I decided to try all the ice cream brands with coffee flavors I could find at the grocery store in my hometown of Merrick, New York.

I was left with seven brands: Friendly's, Turkey Hill, Talenti, Breyers, Ben & Jerry's, Oatly, and Häagen-Dazs.

It was a very happy National Ice Cream Month for me.

I enlisted my mom and brother, who was home from college on spring break, to help me taste. We tried them in order of price — first up, Turkey Hill, which was $3.99 for 1.5 quarts.

Turkey Hill was easily the most affordable option of the seven — it was the cheapest and had the most ice cream by volume.

It was also one of the lowest-calorie options, coming in at 170 calories per serving.

The ice cream was a light brown — it was basically the same shade as my ideal cup of coffee with half and half.

The texture of Turkey Hill's was perfectly creamy, but not melty. I much prefer "hard" ice cream to soft-serve, so I was pleased.

All three of us agreed that Turkey Hill was a great way to start — the coffee flavor was strong and rich, but not overpowering.

It really tasted like a smooth cup of iced coffee, but without the coffee breath.

Next up was Friendly's Coffee, which was $4.39 for 1.5 quarts.

Friendly's gives you a similar bang for your buck and is also 170 calories per serving.

We went from high highs to low lows with Friendly's, which was a shade or two darker.

As you might know, Friendly's is a fast-casual diner-esque chain that's known for its ice cream, so we had high hopes.

However, we were disappointed. We thought the ice cream basically tasted like a glass of milk with a hint of coffee flavor. The texture was similarly creamy, like Turkey Hill, but the taste and the aftertaste were enough for my mom to declare that she didn't "even want to keep it in the freezer."

We moved on, with some trepidation.

For our third flavor, we tried Breyers Coffee, which was made with "Rich Colombian Coffee." It cost $4.69 for 1.5 quarts.

Breyers had even fewer calories, at 140 calories per serving.

Even after sitting in the freezer, the Breyers ice cream was more melty than its predecessors.

It had an almost nutty flavor — certainly not like any cup of coffee that I've had before. However, even though it was semi-melting, I preferred this texture by far. It was very thick and creamy, which is how I like my ice cream.

The flavor was so strong, however, that I felt like I had coffee breath after.

No. 4 was our first (and only) non-dairy offering: Oatly Coffee, which is made with oat milk. It costs $4.99 for 1 pint.

Full disclosure: I love Oatly's oat milk, but I've tried a different flavor of Oatly's ice cream and hated it, so I had low expectations for their coffee flavor.

Their serving size has 210 calories.

Oatly was very proud of its non-dairy status.

Even though I prefer oat milk, my Insider colleagues ranked it dead last in a blind taste test of milk alternatives.

Oatly's ice cream looked more solid than some of its competitors.

When we tried the Oatly, we agreed: It tasted and had the texture of coffee ices, not ice cream. For example, it was crunchier than your typical ice cream.

However, we also agreed that it was very tasty. While the coffee flavor wasn't exactly strong, it was pleasant. Kind of like how La Croix devotees joke that their seltzers taste like a fruit sneezed next to the can ... but in a good way.

If you love coffee and ice cream, but you can't have dairy, you can't go wrong with Oatly.

At this point, I was buzzing from all the caffeine.

Sure, I had had four scoops of coffee ice cream already, but we were in too deep. I couldn't stop now.

Our fifth coffee ice cream isn't technically ice cream — it's Talenti, which is gelato. It costs $5.29 for 1 pint. The flavor also had a slight tweak, as it was Coffee Chocolate Chip.

Talenti is supremely popular and one of the only mainstream gelato brands out there. A serving will set you back a whopping 320 calories.

The Talenti we picked up had a little bit of freezer burn around the edges. It was also darker, probably due to the chocolate chips mixed in.

There are a few key differences between gelato and ice cream: Ice cream is more fattening, as it uses cream instead of gelato's milk; ice cream has more whipped air; and ice cream is served colder.

However, Talenti's offering had one of the highest calorie counts.

We weren't impressed by the chocolate chips — we thought they made our scoops taste like coffee ice cream with coffee grounds mixed in.

For us, texture really set Talenti back. While the coffee flavor was as solid as any other, the chocolate-chip taste didn't add anything, in our opinions, and the ground-up chocolate chips felt like a bad cup of coffee that still had grounds left over, like the last cup of coffee in the pot.

We thought it wasn't worth the extra calories or extra cents.

Häagen-Dazs was our penultimate sample, and it tied with Ben & Jerry's for most expensive: $5.69 for 14 ounces (which is less than a pint).

Häagen-Dazs, which uses all-natural ingredients, also had a high number of calories, coming in at 300 calories per serving.

Häagen-Dazs had the darkest hue of all the flavors.

Häagen-Dazs tasted the most like cream, or milk. The coffee flavor was very light, almost like a coffee milkshake, but icier. For all the hype about Häagen-Dazs, none of us could tell why it's so popular after tasting this one ice cream.

Sure, it may be all-natural and that's why it was the most expensive, but we would take the corn syrup of other brands any day.

You can see how natural Häagen-Dazs is from the ingredients.

All that's in there is: Cream, skim milk, cane sugar, and egg.

Our seventh and final contender was Ben & Jerry's version of coffee ice cream: Coffee, Coffee BuzzBuzzBuzz! It also cost $5.69, but for a full pint.

Ben and Jerry's describes the flavor as "Coffee Ice Cream with Espresso Bean Fudge Chunks."

It was, by far, the most caloric, at 350 calories per serving.

Ben & Jerry's is famous for its mix-ins, and this was no different. We saw fudge chunks immediately.

Unsurprisingly for me, a Ben & Jerry's stan, I loved this flavor. The espresso fudge chunks added a little kick to the coffee flavor, which was already strong and creamy, and they added a delightful crunch, as well.

This was the closest I got to knocking back an iced coffee — so even though it had the most calories and was the most expensive, I couldn't help but put it towards the top of my ranking.

After my seven scoops of coffee ice cream and some espresso fudge, I was feeling a buzz.

The buzz was definitely real.

I noticed that two of my favorites (and Talenti) all boasted that they had Colombian coffee components.

Breyers, Turkey Hill, and Talenti all had Colombian coffee.

Ultimately, though, I had to give the win to Turkey Hill, with Ben & Jerry's coffee ice cream close behind.

From my favorite to least favorite, I ranked them: Turkey Hill, Ben & Jerry's, Breyers, Oatly, Häagen-Dazs, Talenti, then Friendly's.

My overall favorite was Turkey Hill, which had the best coffee flavor and was the most bang for your buck at 1.5 quarts for $3.99.

My least favorite was Friendly's, which I thought had an unpleasant flavor and a mushy texture — and was the only one we felt compelled to throw away.

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