Vegan Ice Cream Taste Test: Soy, Coconut and Cashew Frozen Desserts from Solo Fruit and So Delicious

This morning, host Derick Fage of Breakfast Television Montreal taste tested a slew of vegan ice creams. Many a vanilla, chocolate and cookie dough-ed option later, he chose his favourites:

In the vanilla category he liked the new Solo Fruit soy milk vanilla and for chocolate he liked the So Delicious Dark Chocolate Truffle.

Here’s everything you need to know about picking a non-dairy ice cream:

1. What did I bring on the TV show to taste?

I had four flavours from the much loved Bilboquet, four from Solo Fruits, which is known for its sorbets but just launched a line of organic, vegan, soy milk frozen desserts, and five flavours from So Delicious, which recently expanded from soy milk ice creams to coconut milk and cashew milk.

2. Why would someone who’s not vegan or lactose intolerant eat these non-dairy ice creams?

About 20% of Canadians are mildly lactose intolerant, so sometimes it’s nicer on our stomachs to have something else. That stat goes up to 90% for Asian-Canadians and 75% for African-Canadians. And according to a Nielson food industry report, one of the biggest food trends of the year is eating more plant-based food, so lots of companies, including Quebec-based Solo Fruit have jumped on that trend to offer creamy, dense soy and nut milk options.

3. The Vanillas

We tasted two soy versions and a coconut version. The trick with making a great non-dairy ice cream is to create a creamy texture that isn’t ice-y and that’s not too heavy or too light. But that’s subjective. Some people like a fluffier, milkier ice cream, like the Chapman’s, President’s Choice, Sensastions, Baskin Robbin’s and Coaticook ice cream. And some people like a more dense, gelato-style ice cream where less air has been mixed in. Those usually only come as pints are can be more expensive because there’s a concentration of flavour. The other thing you need to make a great vegan ice cream is a thickener to replace eggs. Most non-dairy iced desserts use guar gum made from the bean of an Indian legume, xanthan gum, made from fermented corn, or locust bean gum, which comes from the seed of the carob tree.

And while you might think soy ice cream is automatically healthier, you always want to check the labels and make sure there aren’t too many ingredients you can’t pronounce. A fresh organic milk ice cream made with nothing but cream, eggs and vanilla is much better for you than something made with a lot of chemicals. Check your regular ice creams, though, too, because a lot of those use extra thickeners, artificial colours, high fructose corn syrup and other chemicals to make them last longer and taste better.

4. The Chocolates

I had one chocolate from Solo Fruit, a cashew chocolate from So Delicious and soy chocolate from Soy Delicious. The Solo Fruit soy ice creams are really dense and creamy. It’s still best to take them out of the freezer 10 minutes before serving them, so they soften up a little, but that’s like any dense dairy-based ice cream. Solo Fruit co-owner Felipe Gallon told me that they tried coconut milk and almond milk, but they liked that soy was lower calorie and they could sell it at a lower price for a higher quality. Chocolate is really good at masking the slightly bitter taste and chalkiness of soy.

5. What if you don’t want vanilla and chocolate? No problem! I brought other flavours: 

Solo Fruit also makes coffee and goji berry-cranberry. So Delicious makes a gluten free cinnamon cookie dough and a chocolate caramel clusters. And I brought four dairy ice creams from Bilboquet for comparison: praline, vanilla-raspberry, cacophonie and pistachio, plus a crazy pretty ice cream cake wrapped in mango and raspberry sorbet (the cakes are availale at the Bilboquet shops around Montreal). They’re pretty incredible works of construction.

6. Where can you get all these vegan ice creams?

The So Delicious and Solo Fruit ice creams are available at most major grocery stores. Solo Fruit just merged with Bilboquet, Essence Glacier and Hudson Ice Cream to form Top Glaciers, so they can improve their manufacturing, supply and delivery system to grocers and compete with larger companies like So Delicious. So you’ll see them more often.