Two Wafers and a Slab of Hope: Twelve Supermarket Ice-Cream Sandwiches, Blind-Tasted by One Very Sticky Family
The ice-cream sandwich is the freezer aisle's most underrated citizen. No chocolate shell, no theatrical ripple, no seasonal marketing budget — just two wafers and a slab of vanilla doing honest, unglamorous work. And yet in 2026 there are more of them than ever, priced from about 25p to nearly a pound each, and the gap between the best and the worst is roughly the width of the Humber.
So we did what any reasonable household does on a wet Saturday in November: bought twelve, blind-tested them, and bickered about biscuits until somebody cried. (It was the six-year-old. It was about a napkin.)
How we tested
Four tasters: two adults, a nine-year-old with a clipboard and a six-year-old with strong opinions and no napkins at all. Every sandwich was unwrapped, halved, coded with marker pen on the plate and served in a random order. No one knew which supermarket was which until the scores were locked in, which is the only way to stop brand loyalty quietly winning.
The melt test was gloriously unscientific: half a sandwich on a plate in a south-facing kitchen at 21°C, prodded with a cocktail stick every fifteen seconds until the filling gave up and slid. We recorded the seconds. Anything under ninety was flagged as structurally untrustworthy.
Prices are what we actually paid in late October 2026, divided by the number of sandwiches in the box. Not the shelf price — the honest, per-sandwich, per-child maths.
The scoring system
Four categories, five points each. Wafer: does it shatter pleasingly or bend like damp cardboard? Ratio: the filling-to-biscuit balance, judged by eye and a firm squish. Melt: higher marks for sandwiches that hold their nerve on a plate. Value: price per sandwich, because nobody's fooled by a fancy box.
The results
| Rank | Sandwich | Wafer | Ratio | Melt | Value | Total | Panel note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Aldi own-brand 4-pack | 4.5 | 4.5 | 4 | 5 | 18 | Behaves like it cost twice as much |
| 2 | Morrisons own-brand 4-pack | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4.5 | 16.5 | The reliable cousin |
| 3 | M&S 4-pack | 4.5 | 4.5 | 4.5 | 2.5 | 16 | Best filling, worst arithmetic |
| 4 | Tesco 6-pack | 4 | 4 | 3.5 | 4 | 15.5 | Fine, then instantly fine again |
| 5 | Lidl own-brand | 3.5 | 4 | 3.5 | 4 | 15 | Absurdly good for 30p |
| 6 | Sainsbury's 4-pack | 4 | 3.5 | 3.5 | 3.5 | 14.5 | Wafer slightly too polite |
| 7 | Waitrose 4-pack | 4 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 14 | Lovely. Priced for a wedding |
| 8 | Asda 6-pack | 3.5 | 3.5 | 3 | 3 | 13 | Filling thin at the edges |
| 9 | Co-op 4-pack | 3.5 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 12.5 | Forgot the corners exist |
| 10 | Ocado own-brand | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 12 | Fancy packaging, timid sandwich |
| 11 | Iceland 6-pack | 3 | 3 | 1.5 | 3 | 10.5 | See car-seat warning below |
| 12 | Farmfoods 6-pack | 2.5 | 2.5 | 2 | 2.5 | 9.5 | Cheapest. Also the dampest |
The winner
Aldi's four-pack took it, and it wasn't especially close. The wafer had a proper snap rather than a sad flex, the vanilla tasted of vanilla rather than sweetened cold, and the filling sat dead centre with a decent margin of biscuit all round. At around 32p a sandwich it also made the M&S box look like a mortgage application.
Which brings us neatly to the posh problem. The M&S sandwich was genuinely the nicest mouthful of the afternoon — real vanilla specks, a wafer with actual butteriness. It finished third purely because it costs roughly 75p per sandwich. Excellent ice cream; questionable economics for a family of four on a Tuesday.
The value pick
Lidl, around 30p a sandwich, fifth overall and only three points off the winner. Nothing about it is remarkable until you eat it and realise you have no complaints whatsoever — which, for the price of a second-class stamp, is the whole point. Buy two boxes, hide one behind the peas.
The car-seat warning
The Iceland sandwich reached full structural failure in seventy seconds, which is faster than most of us can get a child into a coat. By the time we had everyone strapped in, it had become a wafer-scented puddle with ambitions. Serve it on a plate, at a table, indoors, ideally with a parent holding a wet wipe in each hand. Do not — under any circumstances — hand one of these to a child in a moving vehicle with heated seats.
Three things we learned
- Own-brand is not a synonym for cheap and cheerful. The two cheapest boxes were the best and the worst in the entire test, which is either reassuring or terrifying depending on your mood.
- Melt speed is the real quality signal. The sandwiches that scored well on wafer also held their shape. Soggy wafers and thin filling are the same problem wearing different hats.
- Filling-to-biscuit ratio matters more than flavour. Nobody wants a mouthful of wafer with a rumour of vanilla in the middle. The top three all had a filling that went right to the edge.
The correct way to eat one, according to a nine-year-old
"Let it sit for twenty seconds so the wafer softens a tiny bit but not properly, then eat the corners first so it doesn't break, then the middle." We tested this. It works. We are as surprised as you are.
If you are feeding a crowd, buy two different boxes, cut them all in half and call it a tasting board. Children will believe anything described as a board. Add a bowl of raspberries and a squirt of squirty cream and nobody will notice you spent 30p a head.
And if you're feeling ambitious, the ice-cream sandwich is the best cheap dessert in Britain to tinker with: press one into crushed digestives, drizzle with salted caramel, or — our current obsession — swap the vanilla for a scoop of supermarket clotted-cream ice cream and call it a summer pudding sandwich. It's not authentic. It is very good.
