Favorite Day Pumpkin Cheesecake Ice Cream

So I guess somebody had a bunch of pumpkin cheesecake left over in Target's warehouses from the last product I reviewed, so they decided to throw it into a vat of fresh ice cream and make a new fall flavor.

Actually, I wish that's what happened. This product would have been markedly better had it contained big wads of that pumpkin cheesecake from the last review. 

As it is, there's only graham cracker bits scattered through the dessert. It's "pumpkin cheesecake flavored" ice cream. But there's not really any real cheesecake in it. Maybe graham crackers hold up better than real cheesecake when floating in ice cream for some reason..? They definitely bring a bit of crunch, which is nice, but I'd trade the grit of graham for the decadence of real cheesecake any day of the week. Still, it's a good flavor, and the graham cracker pieces almost get the job done.

On the plus side, there is real pumpkin in the mix, as well as a near-perfect balance of pumpkin spice flavors like cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and clove. The ice cream is nice and sweet, rich, and smooth. It's almost on par with the apple crisp ice cream we looked at a month or so ago in terms of overall quality, though I have to say I'd reach for that apple flavor again before I'd grab another pint of this offering.

That's not to say it's bad. If you've got a pumpkin spice jones and need to get your fix, this dairy treat will absolutely hit the spot. Maybe it's still warm where you are. Maybe you're not into apple as much as pumpkin. If so, I say check this product out. $2.49 for the pint.

I give this ice cream 7 out of 10 stars.

Favorite Day Pumpkin & New York-Style Cheesecake Bites

Welp, looks like it's pumpkin season again. Apple is most definitely a harvesty flavor, too, but let's be honest: you can throw down with apple just about any time of year if you really want to. Apple pie in summer time? You betcha. Apple fritters in the spring? Why not? Hot apple cider in the winter? Oh yeah.

But if you break out pumpkin or pumpkin spice any time OTHER than between early September and Christmas time, that right there is a party foul, my friends. Whether you're a basic white girl pining for her first pumpkin spice latte from Starsucks or just a dude with a red beard, a blog, and a dream, if you're gonna eat pumpkin stuff, now's the time to do it.

And do it we shall.

Cheesecake. Oh boy. Time to put on those winter pounds. It's getting chilly out there. Plain NY style cheesecake AND pumpkin cheesecake is a bit of an odd choice to me. Why not another fall flavor? Apple? Maple?

At any rate, both of the included flavors are very good. The pumpkin ones have the perfect amount of pumpkin spice: not too strong, and not too weak. It's rare to find something that has juuust the right amount of PS taste. It's easy to overdo it. As you eat them, though, the pumpkin spices do build up on the tongue ever so slightly.

Maybe that's why they included a more neutral flavor in the pack. In case you're getting pumpkinned out, you can just grab a bite of the New York style cheesecake and reset the palate.

Both flavors are super creamy, sweet, and melt-in-your-mouth delicious. The wife and I will easily polish off this whole container over the course of a single day. The prep involves thawing for 2 hours in the fridge. That's it.

I give these cheesecake bites 8 out of 10 stars.

Favorite Day Apple Crisp Ice Cream

I usually think of fall foods and beverages as warm things. Stuff like pumpkin spice coffee and apple oatmeal goes great with crisp, cool weather. But there's a full five or six weeks, usually centered around September, when summer things don't feel entirely appropriate and neither do autumnal things. 

I guess some might call that period "Indian Summer," although that phrase might be seen as offensive now, considering what we're doing with all our indigenous people-themed sports teams and products like Land o' Lakes butter. So we'll just call it "late summer/early fall" in case the political correctness police are reading.

Late summer/early fall is the best time to enjoy harvest flavored frozen treats for obvious reasons. It's still warm enough for ice cream, and yet it's late enough for apple harvest time. So let's dive in to this pint of Favorite Day brand apple crisp ice cream.

From the moment you pop the lid off the pint, there's a nice brown sugary, caramel-esque sweetness that you can smell. It almost smells like apples and cinnamon, but unless they're part of the "natural flavors" mentioned on the ingredients, there are actually no real apples nor cinnamon in this product.

But in my opinion, it doesn't suffer from the want of those things. The flavor is sweet, creamy, and full of rich caramel and brown sugariness. It really does approximate the flavor of a hearty bowl of apple crisp. The oatmeal pieces round out the texture with a bit of crunch, and they round out the flavor with a nice nutty, grainy essence. They're really more like oatmeal cookie pieces, but I'm okay with that because hey, this is dessert we're eating here, not breakfast.

I'd love it even more if there were real apple pieces and maybe a more obvious cinnamon swirl throughout the product. But it's gonna get a thumbs up from me either way. I tend to score things on my own here on this blog, but when I'm torn between two numbers, I consult the beautiful wifey to break the tie. 7 or 8 for this product, Sonia? "Definitely an 8," she said. She liked it even more than I did. Between the two of us, we polished off the pint within 24 hours of it first being opened. Would buy again next late summer/early fall.

I give this ice cream 8 out of 10 stars.

Archer Farms Caramel Maple Bourbon Pecan Reduced Fat Ice Cream

Cookie dough ice cream has always been one of my favorites. Maybe that's why I was so harsh on Archer Farms Reduced Fat version. I'm very particular about my cookie dough.

Maple pecan and butter pecan type ice creams are usually not at the top of my flavor list...so maybe that's why I'm relatively impressed with this offering. It still tastes sorta diet-y if you know what I mean, but less so than the previously-reviewed cookie dough flavor, as well as many of the Halo Top/Enlightened/Moo-phoria "healthy" ice cream flavors that I've sampled over the past year or two. 

The ribbons of caramel running through this pint are plenteous and sweet, but they're quite bourbonescent as well. "Bourbonescent" means bourbony or bourbon-ish, just FYI. It's not a super harsh bourbon flavor, but it is fairly strong. It's balanced out well with the maple flavor of the ice cream itself.

There are a few pecan pieces in the mix. I'd say you get about a quarter of a pecan nut every other spoonful on average, at least in this batch. That's not bad, but I wouldn't have minded quite a bit more of them.

Walnuts would have been a nice touch, too. Nuts are rich in protein, right? So they stick to the whole "high-protein ice cream" theme we've got going here.

If you don't mind the taste of bourbon, I think we've got a winner here—at least for fans of these newfangled diet ice creams. This one is among the best. But it's still a diet ice cream. $3.69 at my local Target.

I give this flavor 7 out of 10 stars. And I'm a very tough grader when it comes to ice cream.

Archer Farms Cookie Dough Reduced Fat Ice Cream

I've never been huge on diet ice creams. Whether they're fat free, sugar free, or reduced calorie, I find they almost always fall drastically short of their full calorie counterparts—not to mention short of my expectations.

But that's no surprise. If you want to lose weight, eat better, and be fitter, you've got to make sacrifices somewhere. I'm not saying I'm super fit right now, but for me, eating diet ice creams has never been the answer. I'd rather eat half a cup of Ben & Jerry's Chubby Hubby and enjoy every bite of it than eat a whole pint of ice cream that I'm only marginally happy with.

Enter Halo Top and the myriad of ice cream companies imitating them. In recent years, there's been a diet ice cream revolution of sorts. Even I must admit that Halo Top took diet ice cream to a new level. It's still not even close to a good old-fashioned scoop of the real stuff in my humble opinion, but it's closer than diet ice cream has ever been.

There's been a little buzz about these reduced fat, reduced calorie ice creams from Archer Farms on social media. I guess they're Target's answer to the "healthy" ice cream craze. I'm writing this review having only tried this flavor, so I'll be reviewing only this flavor in this post.

It's a little disappointing, to be honest. Not terrible. But if I were ranking all the diet ice creams I've ever had, I'd put this offering just below any of the three or four Halo Top flavors I've tried.

The vanilla ice cream isn't particularly vanilla-y, and there aren't nearly enough pieces of cookie dough in the mix. There seemed to be more "chocolaty pieces" than cookie dough chunks, but there weren't even a ton of those. Also, they didn't add much as far as flavor. I wouldn't have minded if they had skipped the chocolaty pieces altogether and simply found a way to put in at least twice as much cookie dough. The cookie dough was my favorite part of this ice cream, but there just wasn't enough of it to rescue the rest of the product.

On a more positive note, the ice cream is indeed surprisingly low in calories and fat, there's a good bit of protein, and it's only $3.69—cheaper than Halo Top by a significant margin, unless you're lucky enough to find it on sale at a grocery store.

The wife wasn't super enthused about eating this ice cream either. We really wanted to love it, but in the end, it's just another diet ice cream. If a pint of ice cream makes it 48 hours in our freezer without being totally consumed, I'd have to say it's probably not that great. This stuff's been here nearly a week.

I give this ice cream 6 out of 10 stars.

Archer Farms Salted Caramel Gelato

I feel like this salted caramel craze has reached its peak and is starting to wane at this point. I'm not sure when it started. Ten or fifteen years ago, caramel wasn't really a big thing. But then people started adding the words "salted" or "sea salt and..." before it, and suddenly, it was all the rage.

Here are the search results for "salted caramel" from another popular food blog you might be familiar with. Tons of results. We've even seen Sea Salt Caramel Cookie Bites from Archer Farms in recent years. In the end, I think this trend is just a phase; a fad, and it will be over soon. I think most of these salted caramel products are overrated and overhyped, with only one or two exceptions in my experience.

So all that being said, my rant is over, and we can objectively look at this new ice cream flavor from Target. The first thing that jumps out at me is the packaging. Fancy. Much more "top-shelf" than your average store brand ice cream. That shiny golden band around the lid looks good enough to eat just by itself. You could cut a hole in the middle of the lid and use it as a halo for an angel costume in this year's Christmas Nativity.

Or not. Yes, I know I'm digressing. Forgive me.

I just don't have much to say about the ice cream, er, excuse me, gelato, itself. And it is proper gelato, not ice cream. That is an important distinction. It's denser than ice cream, made with milk rather than cream, and has less fat than most American ice creams.

It also contains both corn syrup and HFCS. And carrageenan. Not a fan of any of those ingredients.

The flavor is basically what I expected. It's smooth and silky and slightly salty, but not particularly memorable. The caramel ribbon, at least in my pint, was mostly found in a column right down the center of the product, much like the Ben and Jerry "Core" ice creams. You can taste the butter, and it plays all right with the caramel, but in the end, I think I'd prefer a vanilla base. The mouthfeel's a bit goofy as well.

I can't say I hated it, but I can't really see myself ever purchasing this flavor again, either.

I give this gelato 6 out of 10 stars.

Archer Farms Peanut Butter Ice Cream Bites

Finally! Something that's been spotted on shelves recently and apparently pretty buzzworthy showed up at one of my local Target stores. And for that, I'm quite grateful, because these things are delicious.

A few years back, I looked at Archer Farms Peanut Butter Fudge Ice Cream—a close relative of these ice cream bites. To put it bluntly, I was underwhelmed with the quality of that ice cream. But this time, Archer Farms set the bar a little higher in terms of taste and quality.

This product is a peanut-lover's dream. The chocolate shell isn't bad either, but peanut butter ice cream, peanut butter swirl, and dry roasted peanut bits steal the show here. The ice cream is rich and smooth, and would make a great dessert all by itself. The peanut bits in the shell add some crunchiness and complexity to the texture of the product, as do the peanut butter ribbons—although I wish there were more of them. In fact, that's my biggest complaint: I'd ask for thicker swaths of peanut butter in the core of these tasty bites.

I'd also aim for a smaller size. I'm not sure who's taking the "bites" here, but he or she obviously has a huge mouth. Each piece is somewhere between the size of an ice cream bonbon and a Klondike Bar. They wound up being 3-4 bites each for me.

Also, I'm not sure if it was entirely necessary to individually wrap each bite, but it might have helped a bit in the portion control department—important when you're looking at 6g of saturated fat in a single piece. I know, I know, it's a dessert. You've got to live every once in a while. But still. Also wasn't particularly happy to see carrageenan on the ingredients list—a substance I've become wary of lately.

All things considered, these are worth a purchase, particularly if you love peanut butter like I do. There are a few other flavors of these ice cream bites popping up on Target's shelves. I'll try to take a look at those soon, too. Leave a comment if you've tried any of them.

I give these ice cream bites 9 out of 10 stars.

Archer Farms Tiramisu Gelato

You're going to want to try this.

It's a no-brainer. I was skeptical at first, but this is tied for the best-tasting tiramisu I've ever had. And it's not even really tiramisu. It's gelato.

The first time I ever had tiramisu was in Los Angeles, about eight years ago. I was with a couple of friends, and one of them brought along this crazy French photographer guy I had never met before. He discovered that one other person in our group and I had both never tried real tiramisu, so he took us to this expensive Italian restaurant on Melrose. I insisted that I didn't want any, but he bought all of us dishes of the dessert anyway. It was like $10 for three small bites. It was ridiculous. But so good, it was almost worth the price tag.

Since then, I've tried it at a couple of less-swanky restaurants, and it has been sub-par every time. Until now.

As I mentioned before, the flavor of this gelato is excellent. The top layer tastes like the most rich coffee...it's almost chocolatey. And the ice cream itself is buttery, creamy, sweet and vanilla-ish. Delicious.

There are a few swirls of the dark coffee goodness throughout the gelato, too. It's mixed-in at a pretty good ratio. There's a lot more of the plain golden ice cream, but the dark stuff is so rich, you don't need a lot of it.

The one weakness of this amazing dessert is a slight lack of texture. The creaminess of the ice cream is great, and the softness of the top layer is good...but real tiramisu is made with cookies. Ladyfingers.

If they had added ladyfinger cookies, or even just cookie bits soaked in coffee throughout the ice cream, they could have created the ultimate dessert. Also, there's carrageenan in it, which is bad for you. But it's so low on the ingredients list that we all could have overlooked that.

But seriously, if version 2.0 has little ladyfinger cookie bits all through it, you can bet I'll have heaps of this stuff stocked in my freezer all the time. Even as it stands, this is one killer gelato.

I give the tiramisu gelato 9 out of 10 stars.

Archer Farms Chocolate & Strawberry Dessert Flatbread

I've heard a lot of people complain that some of Archer Farms dinner pizzas don't have enough toppings. I've never really felt that way. I always thought my toppings were plentiful enough, and even if there was a patch of my pizza that seemed a little bare, the crust was tasty enough that I didn't really care all that much.

But with this dessert flatbread, that's definitely my main complaint. Not enough of the toppings. The crust is still good, but it's really a pizza crust. And to me, for some reason, that doughy, crispy bread doesn't quite work as a dessert by itself in the same way that it goes with dinner by itself. It's like one bite is a delicious, creamy, warm strawberry pastry, and the next is just...a plain old breadstick.

Again, I don't mind breadsticks, especially with a traditional pizza. But if you yanked an amazing strawberry chocolate dessert out of my hand and replaced it with a dull, boring slab of baked dough, I'd be upset.

That's kind of what we have here. It tastes great. At least the bites that had some toppings on them. But there were plenty of bites that didn't have any toppings at all.

That could be an issue that varies from flatbread to flatbread, and I just happened to get one of the more sparsely-topped specimens. But I have to score the item I actually got to eat.

Well, I suppose this item was tasty enough, even considering the lack of toppings, that I'd tell you to try it anyway. The chocolate and strawberry flavors aren't overbearing at all. In fact, I think I detected the sweet ricotta and amaretto crumbles just as much as the strawberry and chocolate. That's just fine with me. The bites that contained all the ingredients were balanced and delicious.

This one is more dessert-ish than the Pear & Gorgonzola Flatbread. It's definitely sweeter. I'm a fan. It's great either piping hot out of the oven or chilled in the fridge. Try it both ways.

I give this product 8 out of 10 stars.

Archer Farms Lemon Meringue Gelato

A week or two ago, I promised a bunch of reviews of frozen treats. This is me attempting to make good on that promise...not that you really have to twist my arm to get me to eat ice cream.

I'm always ready to try new flavors, especially when they're familiar flavors like lemon meringue. Although in this case, I think I like the pie just a tad more than the gelato.

It's not bad, don't get me wrong. It's very refreshing and sweet, but it doesn't taste very lemony. And the "meringue" part is nothing more than little marshmallowy things on the top layer of ice cream.

It has a relatively light flavor. My wife thinks it simply tastes like vanilla ice cream, but I do detect a very subtle essence of some citrus fruit. It's almost like they flavored it with lemon peels instead of actual lemon, but I see right there in the ingredients that they did actually use lemon juice from

concentrate. All I can say is, they must have used it sparingly. It's almost like there's a ribbon of lemoniness running around certain portions of the product because some bites really taste like lemon, and others barely taste like it at all.

It's not a bad choice for dessert, but it doesn't even come close to my beloved Creme Cake & Berry Swirl.

I give the Lemon Meringue Gelato 7 out of 10 stars.

Archer Farms Pear & Gorgonzola Wood-Fired Flatbread

This is what I might refer to as a pseudo-dessert. It's not quite sweet enough to be a full-on dessert treat in my humble opinion—oh sorry, I guess we hip blogger-type people are abbreviating that to "IMHO" these days. But anyway, it's not sweet enough for dessert, as I was saying, and it's a little too sweet to be dinner, IMHO.

But that's just fine for folks like me, because I just graze all day long. I rarely eat actual meals. I grew up that way. I ate a "meal" with my family exactly three times a year: Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Other times, my "dinner" usually consisted of a bowl of cereal eaten on the piano bench in the living room, which I straddled like a horse with the food in front of me so I could watch television at the same time. So personally, I don't really mind food that defies categorization.

Likewise, this flatbread is about as dinner-like as a bowl of cereal. However, it's a bit more substantial. And it's actually really good. It might work better as an appetizer, now that I think about it.

There's not a whole lot of savoriness to it either. It's a very light flavor. Neither gorgonzola nor pear brings a heavy taste to the table. The bread, as well, has some flavor, but it's not at all overbearing. And because all flavors present are light, they blend together in a really nice way. Baking them all together sort of allows them to gel a little more, too. There's pear juice in the cheese and cheese juice on the pears—and let me state under no uncertain terms that I do NOT think fruit and cheese (like apples and cheese) is a very good combo, personally. But there are a few exceptions, as is the case with certain pizzas. In this case, think of the pineapple on a Hawaiian pizza, but not quite as pungent.

So whether you have it for dinner, dessert, or a random snack, there's a good chance it'll hit the spot. It's a unique flavor, and I think it's worth a try.

I give this product 8 out of 10 stars.

Archer Farms Dulce de Leche Gelato

In Spanish, "dulce de leche" means "sweet of milk." It's basically caramel. It's good.

This gelato is pretty tasty, too, if you like caramel. Fortunately, I do, and my wife does as well.

But I wasn't quite as enthralled with this product as I was with my delicious Crème Cake & Berry Swirl Gelato. I think it was the bits of sponge cake in the latter that really pushed it over the top for me.

The caramel in this product is very good, the gelato itself is good—on par with all the other vanilla-based gelato I've had from Archer Farms. The mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids are really good...wait...what did I just say? Sometimes it's better to remain ignorant and not even read the ingredients list, especially if you're trying to treat yourself to something special. What? No triglycerides of fatty acids? Cheap jerks.

But seriously, in comparison with the Cake & Berry nonsense, this flavor is just a little boring to me. I feel like I have tasted sweet Heaven, and I don't wanna go back to Earth.

But under any other circumstances, this review would have made this product sound like a raving success. It is very good. My wife claims to like it just as much and maybe better than the Cake & Berry flavor. To say it's better than the Cake & Berry is preposterous to me. But it is a close second...I'll give her that.

I give this product 8 out of 10 stars.

Archer Farms Crème Cake & Berry Swirl Gelato

It's hot again here in Philadelphia. And that means it's time for a barrage of reviews on frozen treats from my local Target's freezer.

Compared to the other Archer Farms gelato flavor that I checked out on this blog, this one's definitely a bit tastier. It's got oval-shaped bits of sponge cake all through it, which add a welcome element of complexity to the product's texture. They taste pretty good, too. They're lightly sweet and bready. The gelato's also sweetened with various fruit juices, as well as sugar, so it's got some quality ingredients. It's not just a tub of cheap high fructose corn syrup.

The fruit gel swirled throughout the product tastes vaguely of berry, although considering there's plenty of actual fruit juice in the product, the reddish jelly part of it doesn't necessarily taste that way. I think it might be a simple matter of blending too many different berry juices together, so that it doesn't taste like any one fruit in particular. But that's not a dealbreaker—not by any means.

This product also lacks the nasty aftertaste present in the Cherry Amaretto version, so that's another plus. The vanilla part of the product is creamy and rich, and its quality falls juuust shy of gelatos I've had from actual gelato parlors—places where one tiny dish of ice cream costs as much as this entire tub.

So all in all, this is a big thumbs up. I could hardly keep myself from eating the whole container in one sitting.

I give this product 9 out of 10 stars.

Archer Farms Cheesecake Bites Collection

I had seen these at multiple Target stores on many different occasions. I'm not sure why I never tried them up until now. It might have been the $5.99 price tag or the fact that I've never been thoroughly wowed by pre-packaged grocery store cheesecake before. There was just something that always scared me away.

But I've made it through a good many of Target's desserts and reviewed them all here on this blog. So it was only a matter of time until I broke down, splurged, and bought this pack of what turned out to be a variety of really amazing cheesecakes.

Each of these flavors was excellent. However, my wife and I both agree that raspberry swirl was best. I thought the New York style was a very close second, but Sonia liked the turtle a little better.

I thawed them according to the directions. I assumed they would be a little harder and colder in the middle, but miraculously, they were evenly thawed the whole way through. Everything from the crust to the creamy cheesecake was incredible. Both taste and texture were just about perfect. I'd call these things restaurant-quality. And not like day-old cheesecake from a dumpy diner quality...like pretty close to Cheesecake Factory quality.

If I wanted to nitpick, I could dock some points for fat content, but hey, it's cheesecake. It's not supposed to be good for you, it's just supposed to taste really good. And it does. I would seriously consider serving these at a fancy shindig, or even a wedding. And finally, I think it's time to give out my first perfect score.

10 out of 10 stars.

Archer Farms Italian-Style Four Cheese Macaroni & Cheese Dinner

I only know what the four cheeses in this dish are because I looked at the packaging just now. They are: parmesan, asiago, ricotta, and romano. Supposedly.

I just tasted a single, mild, pillowy white cheese with an unexceptional amount of tang and a decided lack of smack.

But it still beat the flavor of Kraft Easy Mac. No contest.

The flavor of this pasta was subtle, but it kinda grew on me. At first I missed that yellow, biting cheddar that comes in so many nondescript packets of mac and cheese sauce add-ins. But soon enough, the soft squishy sapor of the included mystery-cheese got the better of my more-attentive taste buds.

I'm not going to lie. It tasted better with Texas Pete. And even though the hot sauce dominated the flavor of the entire bowl of pasta, it was as if the dish had been created to host the fresh flavorful zip of that famous hot sauce.

It took me back to our Disneyland days, when we'd visit Pizza Port nearly every weekend, order the Count Down Chicken Fusilli, and drench it in that sexy sauce. And of course this dish lacked poultry, but it didn't need it.

The taste was clean, plain, and ethereal. It was a chance to cleanse the palate of all pretentiousness and enjoy pasta and cheese for what it was meant to be.

And it helped that Sonia boiled the shells for exactly the right amount of time. Another second longer and they would have suggested sogginess. A second shorter and they would have seemed sorely solid.

Upon first bite, I might have scored these morsels a measly six stars. But by the end of the pot, they earned an elite eight. To see a pic of the prepared product close-up, click here.

I give this product 8 out of 10 stars.

Archer Farms Vanilla Low Fat Yogurt

I know, I know. This is probably going to be the most boring review ever. How and why does someone review vanilla yogurt—of any brand, let alone a store brand?

First of all, I'm writing this before I even try the product. That's right. Thus far, I've been typing this, and I haven't even eaten the yogurt. If you've never had Archer Farms Vanilla Yogurt, I'm right there with you. But I assure you, by the time I finish this post, I will have tried and rated the product. Sit tight, folks. I know you're on the edge of your seats.

Let me remind you all that I've tried the Strawberry Cheesecake Yogurt, which got an excellent score. I also really enjoyed the Honey Almond flavor. I was disappointed with the Banana Cream Pie Yogurt. And the Blackberry version wasn't much better. After I've had this vanilla yogurt, I will have tried every flavor available at my local Target, except for the fat-free version of the Strawberry Cheesecake (I had the low-fat variety). And since I've shared my thoughts about each flavor here on this blog in a sensible and organized fashion, at the end of this blog post, I shall declare myself the world's leading expert on Archer Farms Yogurts.

Now I'm sure there are other people out there who have tried each and every flavor of Archer Farms yogurts, including many that have been discontinued or are not available at my Target. And I'm sure those people have very valid opinions—which may differ from mine to some extent, however, those people have failed to properly catalog their findings and offer them up for everyone to see here on the world wide web in the manner that I have, therefore, I must conclude that I will still reign supreme as the world's leading expert on Archer Farms Yogurts.

And then there will be those naysayers who claim that instead of rating yogurt flavors, I should have done something "meaningful" with my life. Doctors save lives, preachers save souls, soldiers fight for freedom, real journalists enlighten us, yadda yadda yadda. Well, a wise person once said, "Do one thing, and do it better than anyone else." And although my mother made it very clear that I don't do anything particularly well, I have chosen to rate and review Archer Farms yogurt flavors, and until I'm proven wrong, I'm pretty sure I'm the best in the world at it. And while maybe the food-science guys who actually make these yogurts have a legitimate claim at that title, let's face it, their opinions would be too subjective.

So here goes. I'm trying the yogurt: It's good. It's yum-tastic.

Creamier than most plain vanilla yogurts, it's bursting with flavor. It's sweetened with sugar, not high fructose corn syrup. It's low in fat, and it's got 20% of my daily vitamin D.

It's worthy of 8 out of 10 stars.

Archer Farms Amaretto Cherry Gelato

In recent weeks, we've taken a look at crème brûlée and Bolognese pizza. Today, we're taking a look at another European favorite, imported all the way from Italy, according to the label.

It's gelato. Italian ice cream. Not to be confused with Italian ice, or Italian water ice. It's very similar to traditional ice cream, except it's made with skim milk instead of cream. But make no mistake, this isn't a low-calorie/low-fat option. They add plenty of butter and sugar to make up for the nonfat milk. It might have slightly less fat overall, but you can't really call it "light." It gives the ice cream a different texture. It's a bit more rich usually, and it's significantly more dense.

This is a tasty flavor. I love me some amaretto. It has plenty of cherry tang, and there's also a vanilla-esque taste to it. The majority of the product is a white/pink creamy substance with ribbons of deeper red, sticky-sweet syrup running through it.

Compared to other gelato's that I've tried, this one differs in a couple ways. I don't recall ever having a gelato with a "ribbon" of anything in it before. In my experience, that's more like something you'd find in a Ben & Jerry's flavor than in actual gelato. Portions of the product seemed to have crystallized mini-flakes of ice, particularly the syrupy ribbon. So there were minor instances of "crunchiness" interrupting the pure creaminess. Not enough that the experience was ruined, but enough to make me take notice.

Also, my wife and I agree that the candied cherries in this product were NASTY. They were beyond sour. And I love maraschino cherries. But these were...I don't know...something else. Virtually inedible. Thankfully, there were only 5 or 6 of them in the whole tub.

This product also left a bit of a weird aftertaste—similar to that of a cherry-flavored medicine. Not particularly pleasant, but the pleasure of actually eating the stuff outweighs the strangeness of the lingering flavor in my opinion. All things considered, this is a flavor worth checking out, especially if you're a cherry-ophile.

I give this gelato 7 out of 10 stars.

Archer Farms Peanut Butter Fudge Ice Cream

It sure ain't Ben & Jerry's, but it's not the worst ice cream I've ever had either. Then again, it's pretty hard to put peanut butter and chocolate together and make something that isn't tasty.

The peanut butter itself tastes great. It...well...tastes like peanut butter, but frozen. There are ribbons of it throughout the chocolate ice cream, and there's plenty of it. Its consistency is a little stiff. Its a little plastic-ish. But not to the point that you'll want to stop eating it.

The chocolate ice cream tastes a little cheap to me. Like regular store brand chocolate. I've never been one for the plain chocolate or plain vanilla. They're both boring, and they need other ingredients to reach their full potential. I'm not sure that even with the ribbons of peanut butter that this so-called "fudge" reaches its full potential either.

For $4, with copious quantities of saturated fat and calories, I would certainly consider investing in more of a gourmet brand of ice cream if I were going to indulge in a chocolate peanut butter dessert. It might cost a buck or two more, but if you're gonna go off your diet, go off your diet.

Although it was no difficult task for my wife and I to polish off this half gallon of dessert, I don't think this flavor will find its way into our basket at Target again any time soon—and ice cream is one of my biggest weaknesses.

But if you're a peanut butter fudge kind of guy (or gal) this flavor might be right up your alley. It wasn't a product I would recommend, but I also wouldn't warn someone against it either.

I give this ice cream 6 out of 10 stars.

Archer Farms Honey Almond Yogurt

Of the three fat free Archer Farms yogurts that I've tasted so far, this one is hands down the best. Upon opening the container, I smelled an amaretto-esque sweetness. The taste was similar. It was surprisingly snacktacular.

In my review of AF's Blackberry yogurt, I theorized that Archer Farms couldn't make a delicious fat free yogurt, since their Strawberry Cheesecake had been the only successful effort that I had tried at that point. The Strawberry Cheesecake flavor only had a small amount of fat, but it was head and shoulders over the Blackberry and Banana Cream Pie, both of which are fat free. This flavor shoots holes in that theory.

So far, Honey Almond is a very close second-favorite, and the fact that it's fat free only makes it that much more impressive a product. If you like yogurt, honey, and the flavor of almonds, this is the snack for you. 

It's sweet and nutty, although there are no almond bits to crunch on. For some reason, the absence of extra-yogurt textures didn't bother me in this product. It's like it was meant to be completely smooth, unlike the other varieties, all of which were improved by the addition of solid ingredients. Banana cream didn't have any bits of banana, but it sure could have used them.

So far, AF is 2 for 4 with its yogurt flavors, and Honey Almond is one of the winners.

I give this product 8 out of 10 stars.

Archer Farms Blackberry Yogurt

Recently, I've reviewed Archer Farms Banana Cream Pie and Strawberry Cheesecake yogurts. This will be the third and final installment of my initial Archer Farms Yogurt Trilogy. That's not to say I won't be checking out other yogurts in the future...I just might take a little break.

So far, only the strawberry cheesecake variety has impressed me. And the taste of this blackberry yogurt further supports my theory that Archer Farms' fat free yogurts are rubbish compared to those that contain just a gram and a half of fat.

This yogurt is quite bland, with only a fraction of the rich blackberry taste that I had hoped for. Although bananas and blackberries taste nothing like one another, the two yogurts come across the palate in a very similar manner. There's a decided lack of flavor, with only a hint of anything other than plain, fat free yogurt sourness coming through. They both also taste like they contain artificial sweeteners to me. That's not to say they actually do contain them, but my tongue swears that it detects aspartame or something along those lines.

The only thing that gives this flavor any advantage over the banana cream pie is the presence of little fruit bits. Whirled throughout the cup are tiny pieces of chopped, almost pureed, blackberries. They do very little in the taste department, except for possibly adding a hint of tartness, but they do improve the texture slightly. Banana got 4 stars. Strawberry cheesecake got 9 stars.

This cup of yogurt gets 5 out of 10 stars.