Cream of the Crop : Herewith, an opinionated guide to some of the most dessert-worthy frozen treat parlors the Valley has to offer.

Nothing surpasses a cool, creamy ice cream cone on a hot summer night, especially here in the balmy Southland. French gastronome Brillat- Savarin once referred to ice cream as the most perfect and wonderful of all desserts. We’ll take the liberty to include frozen yogurt in this assessment.

Let us, however, go into the relationship with both eyes open. Frozen yogurt has replaced ice cream for many of us because it is low in the C-word--cholesterol. But who among us would dare claim that yogurt has the rich, smooth taste of premium ice cream? The numbers speak for themselves. Four fluid ounces of nonfat yogurt has about 100 calories. Premium ice cream often has three times that many.

So let the buyer beware. When a product that calls itself “lite” ice cream tells you it is 94% fat-free, remember that it is also 6% fat. Furthermore, the rich, eye-catching toppings that yogurt stores bank on to increase sales contain as much or more calories as a small scoop of ice cream.

The editors asked me to conduct tastings in locations far and wide, and that’s just what I did, visiting ice cream and yogurt parlors from Glendale to Agoura Hills.

This selection is only a smattering, but it represents a piece of what is out there. I didn’t include many of the larger franchises--Swensen’s, Baskin-Robbins and Haagen-Dazs--since they are ubiquitous and familiar to most of us. And I should add that for me, the ne plus ultra of local ice cream parlors is still Alhambra’s Fosselman’s, where they have been hand-churning incredibly good stuff since the turn of the century.

Thrifty

Although I have avoided most of the commercial ice creams, it is still impossible to ignore the humble 55-cent drum-shaped scoop at your local Thrifty Drug. This is, simply stated, the best ice cream value I know of in the USA, and possibly on Earth.

What’s more, my friends and I agree that Thrifty ice cream holds it own among its more expensive peers. Try rocky road, with a slightly bitter chocolate taste that some might call sophisticated, or butter pecan, shot through with generous chunks of nut. More tried-and-true flavors such as chocolate and vanilla get mixed evaluations. The chocolate has an appealing, bittersweet tang, but the vanilla is weak on vanilla flavor. Still, at these prices, not even a purists have the right to complain.

Ben & Jerry’s

I have to defer to Ben & Jerry’s. This ultrarich, super-high-quality product belongs at the top of the commercial heap.

The Sherman Oaks store, strategically located in the relentlessly upscale Oak Ridge Plaza, simply reeks of affluence and political correctness. Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield started this operation in a converted gas station. Today, it is an international giant with fingers in several activist pies and stores as far away as Israel and Russia.

The great flavors, often containing as much as 24% butterfat, don’t exactly hurt business either. Some of those sampled: Wavy Gravy (caramel and Brazil nut ice cream with chocolate toffee chunks swirled with caramel fudge), Chunky Monkey (banana ice cream with walnuts and dark chocolate) and Rain Forest Crunch (its own cottage industry of French vanilla ice cream with chunks of rain-forest cashew and Brazil nut brittle and, believe it or not, peach).

Whew! What ever became of plain old chocolate chip? As an aside, the company’s sensational Cherry Garcia is about the best frozen yogurt flavor on the planet, but don’t fret. It is also available in regular ice cream.

Five San Fernando Valley locations: 12318 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks , (818) 789-9951; 119 N. Maryland Ave., Glendale , (818) 545-0445; 164 E. Palm Ave., Burbank , (818) 566-7602; 16101 Ventura Blvd., Encino, (818) 788-4462 , and 29041 Agoura Road, Agoura Hills, (818) 879-1798. Call for store hours. Small (about 4 oz.) , $1.70; large (about 8 oz.) , $2.95.

Dips and Scoops

This small Agoura Hills parlor is unremarkable but for the fact that it is one of the Valley’s few remaining places to get the excellent Carvel products, both the famous soft serve and Carvel’s hard ice creams.

I used to eat Carvel’s creamy, off-yellow frozen custard as a child in New England, and I believe it puts Foster Freeze to shame in both depth of flavor and texture. Try Carvel’s hard ice creams, too, ones like full-flavored raspberry, coffee chip and chocolate brownie. They also make an ice cream sandwich-like treat called Flying Saucers, which comes in a variety of flavors and colors.

Dips and Scoops also sells a fine premium San Francisco ice cream called Bud’s, which has something of a cult in the Bay Area. Bud’s is very rich and comes in such flavors as Bud’s zooka, mocha bean crunch and pecan praline. The company also manufactures something called San Francisco Lite, 97 calories per fluid ounce, and 94% fat-free. Try almond joy, which really does taste like the candy bar, and the very good chocolate raspberry truffle.

29043 Thousand Oaks Blvd., Agoura Hills. (818) 706-3553. Sunday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Single, $1.10 ; double, $1.95.

Granita Italiana

OK, so the Italian ices that Frank and Phyllis Di Maso make at Granita Italiana are not technically ice creams. You won’t care when you taste them. They are probably the Valley’s most refreshing frozen desserts.

This is an oddball little shop, where Phyllis, who doubles as a seamstress, will alter your trousers while you slurp. The ices are made in a rotating Taylor ice cream freezer you see in many shops that serve soft ice cream, but the couple will tell you that it is the recipes that make this slush-like texture so addictive.

The ices have no cholesterol and no fat, though they tend to be quite sweet. There are 13 real fruit flavors including lime, peach, pineapple, cantaloupe and raspberry. I tasted them all, and my three favorites, in order, are the tangy lemon (the traditional Italian favorite), the wonderfully refreshing chocolate and the fruity strawberry. Spumoni freaks will want to try the one real ice cream made here, a multicolored spumoni filled with nuts, dried fruits and only the Di Masos are sure what else.

10160 Mason Ave., Chatsworth. (818) 349-3832. Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Closed Sunday. Cone, 65; 4 oz., $1; 8 oz., $1.50; pint, $2.25; quart, $4.

Foster’s Old-Fashioned Freeze

A man named George Foster opened the first Foster’s Old Fashioned Freeze somewhere in Los Angeles, back in 1946. The firm’s president, reached by phone, couldn’t track down the original site. He could tell me, though, that today the number of Foster’s Freezes has grown to 147.

Many Valley youngsters grew up on this classic soft serve, an ice milk product that contains about 37 calories per fluid ounce of vanilla. (Slightly less for chocolate, due to a lower sugar content.) I tracked one down at an outdoor stand on Reseda Boulevard, where low-riders, Lexi (plural of Lexus) and pedestrians can be found lining up on hot summer afternoons.

I find the product refreshing without being particularly satisfying. I like to have the two flavors mixed, swirled together in a cone. Now you can also have the product blended in a large cup with things like Oreo cookies, M & Ms, crushed Butterfinger bars and more, in something called a Twister. “Everything’s complicated now,” groused one old codger, as he eyeballed my Twister before digging into his vanilla cone. Well, not quite everything.

7343 Reseda Blvd., Reseda, (818) 881-2733, also 7148 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Van Nuys, (818) 785-5700. Daily 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Cones 74, 95, $1.15.

McConnell’s Ice Cream

The company was founded by Gordon McConnell of Santa Barbara in 1950 and it specializes in simple, full-flavored ice creams. This is a natural product, fresh eggs being the only stabilizers used, and a good one.

The only Valley McConnell’s is found at Louise’s Trattoria in Glendale, having recently replaced an ultra-rich handmade product called Amy’s, which ran up to a whopping 40% in butterfat content.

McConnell’s is not particularly rich, as super-premium ice creams go. This one has a 17% butterfat content, and approximately 273 calories per four fluid ounces, so if you’re looking for that ultra-creamy taste, don’t look here.

Chocolate burnt almond is full of fat almonds with a good, chocolaty flavor, and vanilla bean is one of the best I know of in its genre. Other hallmark flavors include an intense Vermont blueberry, Turkish coffee, with what looks like real coffee grounds, and a great raspberry sorbet.

McConnell’s at Louise’s Trattoria, 130 N. Maryland Ave., Glendale. (818) 241-8860. Daily 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Single, $1.50; double, $2.95.

Humphrey Yogart Cafe

The idea is mix-ins at Northridge’s bright, upscale Humphrey Yogart Cafe, where a basic and simple vanilla or chocolate frozen yogurt is mangled into a froth in a magic machine along with a variety of fruits, nuts, cookies or candy bars.

I actually like the tart, low-fat vanilla yogurt served here all by itself, but the two nonfat flavors, a sweeter chocolate and vanilla, are almost never ordered that way. There are more than 30 potential blend-ins and an infinite number of combinations.

Just don’t get the idea that this is low-cal stuff. Sure, one ounce of nonfat vanilla yogurt has a skimpy 18 calories, but what about those blend-ins? Be Spartan and try a small serving of low-fat vanilla instead. Only around 100 calories, and near zero guilt.

18429 Nordhoff St., Unit C, Northridge. (818) 886-8078, also 4574 Van Nuys Blvd., Sherman Oaks, (818) 906-2490. Daily 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Small, $1.35; medium, $1.90; large, $2.60. Toppings: dry, 60; fruit, 80; hot fudge, 80; whipped cream, 50.

Pinot

A few select Valley restaurants actually bother to make their own ice creams. Leave it to the Valley’s best restaurant, Joachim Splichal’s Pinot, to head the list.

It is possible to stop in there just for dessert, but it is advisable to do so only during the last hour of dinner service.

Chef Octavio Becerra and pastry maven Bruno Feldheisen have turned this process into a science. An Italian machine called a Carpigiani makes incredible sorbets like pear, mango, pineapple, strawberry, melon and the amazingly lush banana, using a gizmo called a refractometer to measure sugar content. But what you taste is fruit when you eat these frozen wonders, thanks to the very unscientific fact that 80% of the sorbets here are made from fresh fruit, not syrups or packaged purees.

Pinot’s seductive ice creams, mainly coffee and vanilla, top out at around 28% butterfat and are made from an especially heavy cream (Becerra wouldn’t divulge the brand name), whole milk and egg yolks, not to mention whole-bean coffee and high grade Mexican vanilla beans. 12969 Ventura Blvd., Studio City. (818) 990-0500. Lunch 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, dinner 6 to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 6 to 10:30 p.m. Friday, 5:30 to 10 p.m. Saturday, 5:30 to 9:30 p.m. Sunday; brunch 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Sunday. All desserts $5.

Max Jacobson reviews restaurants every Friday in Valley Life.