Ranking All 14 Halo Top Ice Cream Flavors

We’ll never stop screaming for ice cream, even if it’s not the most nourishing food out there. Conventional ice creams tend to be high in sugar, fat, and calories(it is a sweet treat, after all), with only 2 to 3 grams of protein per serving (compare that to the 15 or so grams you get in a good high-protein yogurt.) But not all store-bought ice creams are the same, and one brand has flipped the script with its nutritional content. 

Halo Top produces ice cream with less sugar and fat, and more protein. Not only this, but it aims to correct the issues common with lower-fat ice creams: iciness, graininess, a crumbly consistency, and less overall flavor. Each pint of Halo Top has its own flavorings, but most feature skim milk, cream, eggs, prebiotic fiber, erythritol (a sugar alcohol that’s a common artificial sweetener), organic stevia leaf extract (a natural sugar substitute), vegetable glycerin, and organic cane sugar. Halo Top also changed its recipe back in 2022, bringing in ultra-filtered milk with concentrated protein to improve its product’s creaminess.

I’ve eaten Halo Top in the past, but my experience was limited, and there are over a dozen regular flavors. To get the complete scoop, I tested and ranked 14 Halo Top flavors to see which ones are delicious, textural delights and which, if any, are duds.

Halo Top’s Birthday Cake ice cream sounded pleasant enough, and the container design promised fun, colorful sprinkles. However, the ice cream looked a little dreary on opening; it had the sprinkles, but everything just looked muted. Appearances don’t always matter, though, so I excitedly dug in and taste-tested only to find more disappointment in store: There was a somewhat grainy texture — not the worst, but still off-putting.

Flavor-wise, the first hit to my tongue was a weird, artificial taste that reminded me of the smell of Play-Doh; this, I think, was meant to be icing. The flavor then transitioned into a rich, sweet pop from the sprinkles and something definitely cake-flavored. Alas, for me, none of these flavor elements felt integrated like they’d be in a real birthday cake; everything felt separate and never came into harmony. Also, the top layer featured a lot of sprinkles, but further excavation revealed fewer further down. Whether this is the norm or just my pint, it doesn’t change my feelings on this flavor: This is one birthday party I’ll be leaving early.

To be fair, it’s hard to get a chocolate-vanilla twist version of anything just right. I like to be able to equally taste and access both flavors; otherwise, you may as well eat only one of them.

Halo Top’s Chocolate Vanilla Twist missed the mark on all these criteria. Upon peeling off the seal, I found what looked like a lot more chocolate than vanilla. Sampling only proved this impression to be true. A bite of both flavors just tasted like chocolate ice cream to me, with not much vanilla at all. Plus, neither the chocolate nor the vanilla sides were all that richly flavored. Maybe that’s the “twist” — that no matter how you structure your bite, it all just tastes like a spoonful of “meh.”

In terms of texture, this Halo Top flavor was moderately creamy with a slight graininess to it; it could be better. It didn’t make me crinkle my nose like Birthday Cake did, but I can’t see this wowing anybody in either a good or a bad way.

Chocolate ice cream has to be amazing for me to want to eat more than a single bite. One of the chocolate-based Halo Top flavors I reviewed achieved that honor, but this regular Chocolate ice cream wasn’t it. The texture was fairly creamy once the ice cream softened up on my counter (this flavor in particular got rock-hard), and the taste was a fairly rich chocolate. The ingredients list includes cocoa processed with alkali (also called Dutch cocoa powder), known for tasting less bitter and harsh (but also for potentially providing fewer antioxidants). The chocolatey notes also lingered well on my palate.

That said, this is not a stand-out ice cream flavor in any way, but it’s not necessarily bad. I personally would feel no desire to ever buy it myself unless I was playing around with toppings and mix-ins, which this would be perfect for. Hot honey is a great chocolate ice cream topping, so maybe that would make it shine more.

I disagree with the connection between “vanilla” and “boring.” Generally, vanilla can wow me when done right, like when one of the best vanilla ice cream brands includes rich notes of vanilla bean. I was curious if Halo Top’s Vanilla Bean flavor, with its inclusion of actual ground vanilla beans, would hit like that.

In appearance, it looked like any typical vanilla bean ice cream, but the tan specks sprinkled throughout it were tinier than expected. The texture was pretty creamy — comparable to conventional ice creams, in fact, and it boasted a fairly nice, balanced vanilla flavor. There wasn’t enough of it, though; regular vanilla bean ice creams have a stronger vanilla flavor, which I’d have preferred. Ultimately, like Chocolate, this wouldn’t be an ice cream I crave, but I’d reach for it before Chocolate if I wanted to put the focus on my toppings or needed ice cream to eat with cake or other desserts. Alone, this vanilla is a bit too “vanilla” for me, and not in the good way.

Some of my favorite ice creams have been cookies-and-cream-flavored. To me, a stellar one should have rather large chunks of chocolate cookie throughout an ice cream base solidly speckled with tiny chocolate pieces. The Halo Top Cookies & Cream didn’t have any large cookie chunks going for it, but it was acceptably dotted with cookie specks.

The texture was fine, fairly creamy, and the base flavor — though pretty generic — popped and lingered. However, the cookie flavor is where this ice cream failed to lift off: It was too subtle. This was more “cream & cookies” than the other way around. It’s marginally more interesting than Chocolate and Vanilla, though, and if I wanted to jazz it up with toppings, at least there would already be some cookies in it — not that I wouldn’t need to add more. All in all, if I just wanted cookies-and-cream ice cream, this wouldn’t hold a candle to a conventional one. If I just wanted a Halo Top, there are nine other flavors I’d choose over this.

The name of this ice cream flavor alone had me optimistic; I can’t think of anything more decadent-sounding than caramel and brownies. The ice cream looked like basic chocolate, though, with no signs of brownie goodness, so I assumed the fun stuff was hiding further down.

The texture of my first bite was creamy with a nice firmness and no graininess, but it just tasted the way it looked: like rich chocolate and no other flavors. Digging a little deeper, I met a roughly 1/2-inch cube of brownie. This was pleasantly sweet and chewy. I was on a mission for more, so I kept digging, finally encountering a few more brownie chunks. Several scoops later, I at last found some caramel swirls — they were very thin and didn’t offer much flavor. It’s the brownie pieces that make this flavor, but they’re too scarce. In short, this pick tastes nice once you get all the salient components in your mouth at once, but there aren’t enough bites like that to bring this higher up in the ranking.

Strawberry isn’t a flavor that easily impresses me. I’ve never tasted a strawberry ice cream I found downright terrible, but I have met many that were just boring. A really, really good one (like very creamy, with lots of sweet berry chunks) can get my respect. The Halo Top Strawberry flavor was right there with the majority: just fine. Nothing special.

Like many of the Halo Top flavors, this one had a fairly creamy texture with no weird iciness. No big fruit chunks were to be found here — just light dots of strawberry. Likewise, the flavor wasn’t very punchy. The strawberry was subtle, though the overall sweetness level was balanced. Chocolate Caramel Brownie was potentially more interesting, but this Strawberry at least provides the flavor it says it does, which is perhaps easier with a single flavor note to achieve, rather than a trio of sweet things.

This taste-test taught me something about my relationship with Halo Top’s Peanut Butter Cup ice cream flavor. When I’ve purchased from this brand in the past, this is the flavor I bought. I love peanut butter, whether it’s scooped straight from the jar, frozen and put to some clever use, or melted in the microwave. Peanut butter ice cream seemed like the obligatory flavor for one so loyal to this humble groundnut butter. However, when I tested this ice cream with my thinking-and-comparing cap on (and no extra dollops of peanut butter added to it), I realized that I haven’t actually enjoyed this ice cream as much as I assumed I did.

Sure, the texture was smooth, but the whole point of this pint is peanut butter. There was only a single thread (“swirl” is too generous a term) running through it, shoved on the far edge like an afterthought. The bites that contain some of the PB thread are pretty good due to contrast: The muted, subtle flavor of the ice cream enhances the actual peanut butter. However, the majority of the bites contain no peanut butter thread, so they’re just a boring, unsatisfying ice cream. That said, prior experience tells me this flavor is decadent with extra melted peanut butter and a sprinkling of salted cashews (yes, a different nut). These additions could also zhuzh up a serving from a good cottage cheese brand.

For me, perfection in a chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream looks like big, chewy dough chunks, rather than tiny pieces. There’s just something about the dopamine hit of discovering a sizable morsel of cookie dough and biting through it. This preference explains why Halo Top’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough flavor is middling in this review: There’s plenty to enjoy, but nothing to get really excited about.

Opening the container, I saw that it resembled a toned-down Cookies & Cream, with tiny pieces of the star ingredient scattered uniformly throughout the ice cream. The texture was nice and creamy, and the dough flavor was sweet and present in each bite — arguably too present (I can see it getting overwhelming if you’ve set out to “accidentally” eat the whole pint). If you aren’t as picky as me about the size of your cookie dough chunks, this flavor would likely be higher on your personal list.

Chocolate and coffee make a dynamic duo, so I was enthused by the concept of this Halo Top Mocha Chip ice cream. Two of Halo Top’s products made with chocolate hadn’t impressed me much, so I wasn’t expecting miracles, especially not when I opened the container and found what looked like just regular chocolate ice cream.

My first spoonful revealed a moderately creamy flavor — not a super-rich, “real ice cream” mouthfeel, but fine for a light ice cream. The strong chocolate flavor was reminiscent of the brand’s regular Chocolate ice cream, which didn’t bode well considering Chocolate Caramel Brownie’s first bite yielded the same results. Ever hopeful, I took another bite and soon realized the mocha bits were there; they’re just not really visible to the naked eye. However, they yield a slight, but noticeable, crunch and a mild, but present, mocha flavor that enhances the chocolate exactly as they should, making this flavor of Halo Top much more interesting than the regular Chocolate, and less disappointing than the Caramel Brownie pint. As far as chocolate goes, this would be my second choice from the brand; there was another that more than delivered on all promises.

I’ve never been one of those mint chip ice cream people. To me, this fresh, inventive pairing tastes anywhere from “fine” to “lovely,” but isn’t something I’d crave like its staunch enthusiasts do. That said, green ice cream always looks so fun and appealing that I can’t help but snag a bite of someone else’s (if we’re cool like that). So, when I opened my tub of Halo Top Mint Chip, I stared at it a moment before grabbing the container to make sure I hadn’t taken the wrong one from the freezer. It wasn’t green; it was white with chocolate flecks, similar to the Cookies & Cream ice cream.

Mint Chip had the creamiest texture of all the Halo Top ice creams I tried. It’s not comparable to the richest ice creams out there, but it would give a mid-tier version a run for its money. The flavor was a moderate, sweet mint — nothing over-the-top — and there was a delightful burst of extra sweetness when I bit into chips of chocolate, of which there were plenty. In the end, this was really pretty good. I can see mint ice cream people going to town on it.

In the creamy depths of this pint is where I learned Halo Top can make a wow-worthy chocolate-based ice cream. The name Chocolate Ice Cream Cake makes big promises, and after having my Caramel Brownie dreams crushed, I wasn’t getting my hopes up — particularly not when I opened this pint to see, once again, an expanse of plain-chocolate-looking ice cream. This one, though, included mysterious swirls of gummy white bits.

Once the ice cream softened, the white bits’ significance was clear: icing. Digging in, I found a creamy texture, rich, fudge-like chocolate flavor, and wonderfully crunchy bits of chocolate cake. The icing didn’t do much flavor-wise, but it didn’t give any rubbery “Play-Doh flavor” vibes like that of the Birthday Cake ice cream.

This is very sweet ice cream, as it should be. (One doesn’t pick up a pint of Chocolate Ice Cream Cake expecting anything else.) The sweetness never comes off as artificial, either. This is good stuff.

I’d typically never think to buy an ice cream called Blueberry Crumble. The dessert itself is yummy, but my tastes in ice cream just run in a different, less fruity direction. (I’m not one of those people who mourned the Blueberry Crumble discontinued Haagen Dazs ice cream, for instance.) This Halo Top flavor changed all that.

The unbroken surface was a subdued purple color that didn’t look like it held any tasty magic, but I was wrong. As I dug in, I found pieces of blueberry and light yellow crumbles. On the palate, these ingredients worked together to indeed taste like a cold, sweet blueberry crumble. For the purposes of this taste-testing, I’d been trying to go easy on the ice creams to not spoil my appetite for them. With Blueberry Crumble, I threw caution to the wind and kept my spoon busily scooping. I had no choice; it was that good.

If I could write an ode to this Halo Top ice cream flavor, I would — but a rave review will have to suffice. I already knew I’m a sea-salt-caramel type, but remembering how the caramel was so scarce in Chocolate Caramel Brownie, I opened my container of Sea Salt Caramel with cautious optimism. That cautiousness wasn’t lessened by the surface color, which looked like plain vanilla. But then I tasted it.

This ice cream was very soft and creamy, possibly more so than any other. The base was a delicious, sweet caramel that would have satisfied me alone, but there was more delight to come. It took a bit of excavating to find the gooey, decadent caramel ribbon, but it was chef’s kiss when I did — the perfect amount of warm, bright, salty sweetness. More would have been too much. This is the best Halo Top flavor, spoons down.

To choose flavors of Halo Top for the review, I scoured all the local stores where the brand is available near me – Walmart, Harris Teeter, and Target. For the best possible consistency, I kept all the pints in the back of my freezer, rather than near the front or in the door, where the temperatures can fluctuate. Before taste-testing, I let each flavor rest on the counter for 5 to 7 minutes to allow it to soften up a bit.

To determine my ranking for each type of Halo Top, I first assessed flavor — specifically the balance, aftertaste, and my overall impression. Texture was important, too. The ideal mouthfeel was as “ice cream-like” as possible — rich and creamy, not chalky, grainy, crumbly, or icy, and the ice cream needed to unfreeze and soften equally and appealingly when removed from the freezer. To a lesser degree, I assessed appearance: If two ice creams were about equally delicious and creamy, but one looked less appealing than the other, it may be ranked lower.

I did not rank these ice creams based on price (which varies by location) or their calorie count — although it is clearly written on the labels of each container. The potential health drawbacks or benefits of the ice creams’ ingredients were not of concern for this review, either.