Whenever I hear the phrase, “It’s just so vanilla!”, I get rather annoyed. People use this phrase whenever they’re trying to call something decent, but boring. I personally really love vanilla as a flavor and I think that it is far from boring; I even think that it is better than chocolate! Okay, cue the gasps of astonishment and the comments of, “You don’t like chocolate?? Chocolate is the best flavor in the world!” Sorry, but I beg to differ.

For one, vanilla is a universal flavor. If you pull out any number of recipes, you will probably find that it calls for vanilla. Vanilla is used to flavor almost anything, including cookies, fountain drinks, tea, and even breakfast cereals. All of these items use vanilla as a flavoring because it enhances the taste and makes it more enjoyable, while at the same time retaining the taste of all of the other ingredients. If you were to add cocoa to any of these items, it will all just taste like chocolate. You would lose all of the other delectable flavors to the overpowering chocolate.

The next great thing about vanilla is that it is very refreshing on hot summer days. When it’s hot outside, most people don’t want to have something really rich or heavy; they’d rather have something light and refreshing. Well vanilla meets those requirements! A scoop or two of vanilla ice cream is the perfect treat to cool you off in the summer. Chocolate is much too rich and overpowering to be enjoyed in the summer. You can also more easily enjoy vanilla at other times of the year, no matter if it is hot or cold; with chocolate, it’s only the most enjoyable in the colder months.

Lastly, let’s talk some more about that vanilla ice cream. Vanilla ice cream is a great standalone treat; it’s perfect enjoyed as it is, with no add ins or toppings. But, vanilla ice cream also serves as a perfect base to add toppings to. You could add fruit or nuts or crushed up candy or caramel syrup or even little bits of cookie dough or cake. And the best part? You can add all these things to vanilla ice cream, and it will still taste good! Since vanilla is such a light base, you can pair almost anything with it. Now imagine if you added all of these things to chocolate ice cream. You would very quickly end up with a rich, disgusting, sickening mess that no one would want to eat.

So I think it’s safe to say that vanilla really is the best flavor out there! After all, have you ever had a big bowl of homemade vanilla ice cream? Or had apple pie a la mode? Can you just imagine a scoop of that homemade ice cream slowly melting and trickling down into the flaky crust and into the warm, oozing, cinnamon-y apple filling? Mmmmm…