Is There Enough Caffeine In Coffee Ice Cream To Make You Jittery?

There are two reasons you look forward to coffee every morning: its pleasantly bitter taste, and its miraculous power to energize you. This makes coffee ice cream odd, because while it has that delicious, authentic coffee flavor you love, you probably don't want a caffeine boost during dessert. So how much caffeine does coffee ice cream actually contain?

A full 14 ounce carton of Häagen-Dazs coffee ice cream has 75.6 milligrams (mg) of caffeine total. If you break that down that into individual scoops (usually about 4 ounces), that's 21.6 mg per scoop. If you go with Häagen-Dazs' recommended serving of two-thirds of a cup (slightly over 5 oz), which is slightly more generous, that's still only about 29 mg of caffeine.

To put these numbers into context, a single cup of coffee has about 95 mg of caffeine on average, and most espresso drinks which include a single shot have about 64 mg of caffeine. Your coffee ice cream dessert is unlikely to perk you up, and you'd have to put away most of the carton to get even close. You're buying it for the flavor, not the boost.

Häagen-Dazs is a good starting point because it has a fairly average amount of caffeine for coffee ice cream. Other common supermarket brands have significantly less caffeine, with Breyer's coming in at 20 mg for a two-thirds cup serving and Edy's/Dreyer's (the brand goes by different names depending on what region you're in) only having 15 mg of caffeine per serving. On the other hand, it's much less caffeine that Ben & Jerry's multiple coffee flavors, which all have about 47-49 mg of caffeine per serving — this includes the "Coffee, Coffee, BuzzBuzzBuzz" flavor with its espresso bean fudge chunks, "Brewed to Matter" with fudge chunks and brownie batter, and "Coffee Toffee Bar Crunch" with toffee pieces.

The minimum amount of caffeine you can ingest before you feel a noticeable change is hard to pin down because it varies from person to person, and your body might metabolize caffeine more quickly or more intensely than somebody else. Unless you feel like you're particularly sensitive to it, your midnight snack of coffee ice cream shouldn't keep you up. Besides, if you eat that entire Häagen-Dazs carton, you'll be feeling the 24 grams of sugar more than any caffeine.

If you want a better idea of how much caffeine is going into coffee ice cream, it's not too difficult to try making some yourself. Ice cream is mostly made from milk, heavy cream, and sugar, and if you're making coffee ice cream, you just add coffee grounds or brewed coffee or even espresso. In a homemade recipe, a pint will usually include about half a cup of coffee, making it only a quarter of the finished ice cream. If you make it yourself, you can choose to make it with decaf coffee to eliminate any risk, although you'll know if you're adding enough coffee or espresso to perk you up because you're measuring it yourself. Plus, if you have an ice cream maker, you might be able to kill two birds with one stone — ice cream maker bowls are also a good way to create a big batch of iced coffee.

In any case, caffeine in ice cream is more comparable to caffeine in Coca-Cola than coffee, since a Coke can has 34 mg of caffeine and a Diet Coke can has 46 mg. If you can handle a late night can of soda, then you shouldn't have any trouble with late night coffee ice cream.