Comparison Post: Haagen-Dazs Vanilla vs Haagen-Dazs Vanilla Bean

Ok peeps, does anybody else think its a bit weird that Haagen-Dazs makes a Vanilla ice cream and a Vanilla Bean ice cream? Like, is that really necessary? Regardless, it is my duty as your guide to the ice cream world to try both flavors and report back.

First, the description.  I'm taking the full paragraph from the website because it gives more info about the supposed differences between the two flavors.

Vanilla:

Vanilla is the essence of elegance and sophistication. This marriage of pure, sweet cream and Madagascar vanilla creates the sweet scent of exotic spice and a distinctive taste that lingers on the tongue.

Vanilla Bean:

A unique twist to our iconic flavor.  Our ice cream blends Madagascar vanilla and pure, sweet cream with flecks of real vanilla beans, for a spicy and sweet delight.

Do we all agree that Haagen-Dazs' descriptions are bordering on florid here? Just wow.  So the descriptions have got me all hopped up and raring to eat some ice cream, but let's investigate the ingredients first to see which components of the ice cream are different.  As Lizzy mentioned in her post on Haagen-Dazs Coffee ice cream, there are a few H-D flavors that contain very few ingredients.  Both of these flavors fall into that category.

Vanilla consists of cream, skim milk, sugar, egg yolks, vanilla extract.
Vanilla Bean consists of cream, skim milk sugar, egg yolks, ground vanilla beans, vanilla extract.

So, they're exactly the same plus or minus some ground vanilla beans.

The first difference I notice after cracking open the pints is the color. The Vanilla is more yellow/cream colored and the Vanilla Bean has a brownish tint from the ground up vanilla beans.

Suprisingly, the texture is quite different.  I didn't expect that the addition of ground vanilla beans would change the texture so much.  I guess there's a possibility that the two flavors had different lives leading to different temperature changes in transport, etc... that could contribute to this difference.  The Vanilla Bean was very thick and creamy.  The Vanilla had a texture that other ice creams have, but I have an incredibly difficult time describing.  It's like there's a brittleness or resistance. The ice cream isn't hard, but it's not creamy either.  It's almost like biting into that foam they use to make molds of your teeth, but colder and more delicious.

Vanilla Bean on the left; Vanilla on the right.

Flavor-wise these were fairly different. The Vanilla flavor had the harsh and somewhat alcoholic taste you get in ice creams flavored with vanilla extract.  It kind of reminded me of the flavor of soft-serve vanilla ice cream.  The Vanilla Bean had enough actual beans to drown out the harsh element of the vanilla extract.  It was a warm and round vanilla flavor instead.

So, what's the scoop? Vanilla Bean is definitely my favorite of the two, but I'm not madly in love.  I'm not a vanilla person. Your vanilla flavor has to be really special to make me buy vanilla ice cream to eat plain (like a certain little Iowan ice cream company that could).  Was Haagen-Dazs this special?  Nope.  At least I didn't think so. It was definitely better than your standard store brand vanilla, especially in texture.  Since I normally eat vanilla ice cream as a sundae base, I would probably pass on this for something cheaper, unless I was in the mood for a hoity-toity sundae.

So there you go!

Bonus! A sundae with the Vanilla Bean ice cream.