Dr. Gourmet's Food Reviews

So Delicious Dairy Free Coconutmilk Chocolate Frozen Dessert

Coconutmilk Dairy-Free Frozen Desserts: Vanilla Bean and Chocolate

It's Summer and we have been featuring a lot of sherbets and sorbets here at Dr. Gourmet. It is pretty easy to make your own, but there are so many frozen ice cream style desserts on the market that you can easily grab something - and there are a lot of choices now in the 100 calorie per serving range. The gold standard is still Stonyfield Farms, in our opinion. They have a number of flavors and their Minty Chocolate Chip is about as good as it gets.

This week we look at So Delicious. These are interesting because they are made with coconut milk, making them dairy free. They have a lot of flavors and we settled on the no sugar added Vanilla Bean and the no sugar added Chocolate. Both use erythritol as the sweetener. It is a sugar alcohol and now widely available, but many of the products that I have tasted containing erythritol have an overly sweet flavor.

First up was their Vanilla Bean. We chose to let both of these temper for bit. If you let your ice creams and frozen desserts sit on the counter for about 15 minutes, you will find those frozen desserts not only easier to scoop - they'll also taste creamier. And creamy this one is. It is very rich tasting, with good vanilla bean flavor but an almost overpowering coconut taste. If you are a fan of coconut cake, this is your dessert to be sure. Just like coconut cake, it is super sweet. As a vanilla ice cream this is good, but as a coconut cake flavored ice cream it is great.

And it is only 100 calories per 1/2 cup serving, with just a single gram of sugar. So where do all the calories come from? Fat. Saturated fat to be precise. A whopping 7 grams in a half cup. Don't get me wrong: I am not a low fat guy, nor do I think that you should be eating a low fat diet. It is just something that you want to be aware of when doing a bit of budgeting for your day-to-day diet. Yes, there is a lot of controversy about whether coconut products that are high in saturated fat are not as bad for you as the saturated fat in beef or other animal products. While I don't know the answer to that for sure - more research needs to be done - this is an interesting dichotomy.

On the one hand, there is this product with almost all of the calories coming from fat, and on the other hand are the Stonyfield yogurts with almost all the calories coming from sugar. In the end I think that this is all about striking a balance to make sure that not all your calories come from simple sugars or saturated fat but they are part of an overall healthy pantry.

Back to the So Delicious. The Chocolate is as good as you will get in a lower calorie frozen dessert. It has the same amount of calories, fat, and sugar as the vanilla and is equally creamy. The chocolate flavor is more cocoa than chocolate but it is closer to chocolate than most desserts if its type.

Note that we previously reviewed products by this company and after a bit of digging we found out that the company makes So Delicious (almond and coconut milk based), Soy Delicious (soy based) and their previous brand name Turtle Mountain. These products have had mixed reviews in the past so you may not be able to count on this as a brand. Back in 2008 we ranked one of their bars as a "Don't Eat" in our review.

Good products. You are stuck between no sugar and no fat in the freezer case it seems. Just know what you're getting when you buy it and enjoy your dessert when you do have it.

Reviewed: August 25, 2017