In a 2019 interview, Ina Garten revealed that her favorite ice cream flavor is vanilla, and despite having her own recipe for the flavor, the celebrity chef reaches for three brands when it comes to grabbing a pint of the frozen dessert. As Garten put it, "Häagen-Dazs is amazing. Ben and Jerry's. Also, Ciao Bella makes a great vanilla ice cream."

Garten also shared that she doesn't like her vanilla ice cream rock hard because one cannot taste all the flavors when a frozen dessert is too hard. Instead, she prefers to put it in the microwave for a few seconds to help soften it.

As Garten noted in a separate interview, to turn ice cream into a dessert, she pours a little chilled Limoncello over scoops of her store-bought vanilla ice cream and then sticks a bit of bakery-made biscotti on the side, thereby adding texture and flavor to the sweet vanilla canvas. Garten asserted, "Everybody will lose their mind."