Review: Western Family "Ultimate Raspberry Jubilee" Frozen Yogurt

After a quick poll, seems like a number of people wanted to see a frozen yogurt review, so today we present to you this review of Western Family Classics Ultimate Raspberry Jubilee Frozen Yogurt, the house brand of Save-On-Foods. I feel that I need to preface this review by saying that, unlike some other bloggers, I really appreciate a true yogurt taste in frozen yogurt. You know, that tartness, that tang that is reminiscent of real yogurt. However, I realize that not everyone appreciates this, and that many people go to frozen yogurt over ice cream because of the fat content. So I will try to put my prejudice aside for this review and judge it as a dessert, not according to my yogurt bias. :)

Those of you who have been reading this blog for a time should remember our Chapman's Raspberry Sorbet fiasco. You can probably understand why, when I opened the carton and saw this colour, I was a bit apprehensive. The "raspberry ribbons running through ... raspberry flavoured frozen yogurt" were evident, and I was somewhat comforted by the fact that this did not have the distinct odor of kool-aid that the aforementioned sorbet possessed. Overall the texture of this was soft, and while it was evident that some stabilizers and gums were used, it wasn't noticeably gel-like. 

I am still not 100% sure of where I stand on this product. Every time (and I mean every time) I begin to eat a serving of this, I think to myself "Geez, this is awful, why did I start this again?" But then about three bites in I think "This isn't half bad, I could keep doing this" and by the end I am left wanting more. Seriously, this happened every time I ate this through the entire carton. It's totally bizarre, and makes me wonder what kind of crazy drugged raspberries were put in this thing!

I will start by saying that I feel like the ribbon, as far as taste is concerned, is fairly unnecessary. This yogurt errs on the sweet side and the ribbon threatens to push it over the top on occasion. Well, that and it just doesn't wow you in terms of flavour: pretty nondescript, and I think making it slightly more tart would have added another dimension to this product. The yogurt itself is, again, sweeter than I would want for a frozen yogurt (oops, sorry, was trying to keep my bias out of this!) but not offensively so. On first bite (here goes that weird effect again), it tastes not entirely natural, but as you continue to eat it the flavours of real raspberry do come through. So even though this calls itself "raspberry flavoured", I would say they did a good job of capturing the flavour of the fruit (unlike some others I could mention). Overall, the flavour of this product reminds me a lot of a raspberry jam. And I mean that in a good way. Is this really the "ultimate" raspberry frozen yogurt that the name suggests? No, not by a long shot, but it's still a good product.

Recommend to a friend? If you're not expecting a totally true-to-life but still natural-tasting raspberry frozen yogurt, and don't have my tart yogurt preference, I'd definitely recommend this.

Repurchase? This doesn't fit my vision of frozen yogurt, but given that I was always left craving more (for some strange reason), I could see myself buying this again.

Review: Ben and Jerry's "Milk and Cookies" Ice Cream

After seeing some rave reviews about this product on other blogs and websites, I was pretty excited to give this Ben and Jerry's flavour a try. And I was certainly not disappointed. This stuff is like cookies n' cream on steroids!

The part I enjoyed most was the dark cookie “swirl” which felt to me like a ribbon of crushed up oreo cookie pieces. It had a nice crunchy texture and pleasingly chocolatey taste to it, and it made a nice contrast to the chewier pieces of chocolate chip cookie dough. The cookie dough pieces had a good flavour that pervaded through most of the ice cream, and it really did remind me of raw cookie dough – and since I spent a lot of time eating raw cookie dough when I worked in a bakery at a grocery store chain that will remain nameless, I have a pretty solid reference point. :) Because the cookie elements of this product were fairly sweet, I also appreciated that the vanilla ice cream provided a cool and refreshing “neutral” background.

Overall, I liked this flavour a lot. It had a really nice balance of flavours, textures, and sugar levels, and I think it's a really interesting and successful take on a cookies n cream/cookie dough hybrid.

Recommend to a friend? Definitely

Repurchase? Yes – this one is worth the price tag

Review: Ben and Jerry's "Half Baked"

You know what sucks? Getting swamped in school work and planning and having to put blog reviews on the back burner for a week. You know what's awesome? One of the local grocery stores having Ben and Jerry's ice cream on sale for half price. With the financial burden of purchasing this brand lightened somewhat, I can finally get down to trying some new flavours – rejoice!

The first one I decided to sample was Ben and Jerry's Half Baked, a combination of vanilla and chocolate ice creams with cookie dough and brownie pieces mixed in. I was pretty optimistic about this one heading in, so I have to say that I'm a bit disappointed overall. The price of having high standards, I guess?

First things first, I really loved about 80% of this product. Both the chocolate and vanilla ice creams were of Ben and Jerry's usual excellent quality (the conclusion I've come to is that the vanilla we experienced in If I Had 1,000,000 Flavours was, indeed, a fluke), and I particularly enjoyed the flavour of the vanilla. The brownie pieces were very fudgey and had the nice texture of the slightly underdone brownie that is soft and gooey and oozes chocolate.

However, the other 20% of the ice cream was the cookie dough, and I found it to be a bit of a let down. Now, we tried their cookie dough flavour ice cream before and the cookie dough in that product, though it did freeze more solidly than we would have liked, was quite good. The cookie dough in this carton of Half Baked was not just hard, it was dry and crumbly, and overall just not very nice. I found myself trying to avoid the cookie dough and, when it did end up on my spoon, chew through it as fast as possible just to get it over with. Which doesn't make a lot of sense to me, since they should be using the same stuff for both flavours, no? If this is another “fluke” inconsistency, then Ben and Jerry's seriously need to look at some quality control!

Recommend to a friend? The non-cookie dough parts of this were great, and if the texture of the dough was improved I would recommend this. As it is, I'm not sure I could justify telling someone to pay full price for this.

Repurchase? As per the comments above, if the dough was better, yes. Otherwise, no.

Review: Haagen Dazs "Green Tea & Honey Vanilla" Ice Cream

As mentioned before, when my sister came over for Thanksgiving, we had initially intended to find a carton of Island Farms green tea flavour ice cream to review, but were unable to locate any (as we discovered a week and a half later, we had neglected to visit the one grocery store in town that carried it...review upcoming!). Even after my sister had gone home, J and I still had a desire to try something frozen and green tea, so we picked up a container of Haagen Dazs Green Tea & Honey Vanilla, which proclaimed itself to be "new".

We were a bit skeptical at first: both of us like green tea, especially J who is much more of a tea connoisseur and who has had a lot of green tea during her time in Japan. We weren't entirely sure how the vanilla and honey flavours were going to compliment the flavour of green tea. I like tea lattes and tea mistos as much as the next commercial coffee shop addict, but green tea was one I tended to stay away from because it can easily be botched (at least in my experience). Upon opening, we found a very pale green ice cream that was easily divided between the pair of us.

Like almost all Haagen Dazs ice creams, this one is simple and gets right to the point. In this case, however, it kind of gets to the point in reverse order.  By that we mean that the flavours dominate in the reverse order of how they are listed on the package. While vanilla is listed last, we found this to be the most dominant flavour, with the honey coming in to sweeten it nicely (although to be fair, this ice cream contains both sugar and honey and while J said she could taste the honey, all I could taste was "sweet" and nothing discernibly honey-like). In fact, if you hadn't told us what this ice cream was called, and if we ignored the colour, I think both of us would have called it a funny-tasting vanilla ice cream. The green tea is there. Kinda. If you're really looking for it, you can taste it, but otherwise it is mostly present as an aftertaste, or as a very subtle tea-like note at the end. Basically, this ice cream is vanilla infused with green tea, rather than being a straight-up green tea ice cream. So I guess, in a way, it's more complex than we originally thought?

Recommend to a friend? If you are expecting in-your-face green tea flavour, you will be disappointed. However, if you want to experience a light and non-threatening variation on green tea, you will probably enjoy this.
Repurchase? J: Maybe. It's a good ice cream, but it doesn't deliver the green tea taste I was hoping for. B: It wouldn't be first on my list, but I enjoyed this. Would repurchase if I was in the mood.

Review: Dorgel "Tangerine Raspberry Mango" Gelato

 Edited to add: Forgot to mention that today marks the one month birthday of Two Girls, One Scoop! Exciting!! In our introductory month of blogging about all things ice cream, we have received over 1,100 page views from web surfers in over 10 different countries! Thank you to everyone who has been reading so far - we hope to keep blogging well into the future! :)


 Our second pink ice cream selection in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month:

 Though not pink in its entirety, Dorgel Tangerine Raspberry Mango Gelato does have a raspberry element, which is a nice colour of pink. Besides, after perusing the frozen foods section of Save-on-Foods, so many of the pink selections were strawberry, and we have already discussed our distaste for this particular flavour. So after much deliberation, we decided to give this one a try. Bonus: it's fat free!

Upon opening the container, we discovered that it looks....extremely unappealing. In terms of aesthetics, the real deal looks nothing like the fun-coloured scoops on the front of the container. It almost looks like a rainbow threw up in there. Once we scooped past the very top layer, it did improve slightly in appearance, but not significantly. The texture is what you might expect from a commercial gelato or sorbet: not crumbly, not creamy, not flaky....just not very cohesive. After all, it's essentially frozen juice with some added gums for stabilization, so it doesn't have the smoothness of a normal ice cream. As J said, it's basically like a "soft popsicle" in a carton.

This flavour is supposed to encompass three different fruits: mango, raspberry, and tangerine. Though we were able to isolate each of the flavours, the mango is definitely dominant. You can easily find the raspberry if you are so inclined, but the tangerine is extremely hard to get on its own. If you're eating the whole thing together, it mostly tastes like a sweet mango. The overall flavour is sweet and fruity, while the texture is very light and refreshing. After a whole slew of dairy-heavy ice creams, this light, fat-free option was a nice change, even if it looks like tie-dye gone wrong.

Recommend to a friend? If you are looking for something light and fruity, and the colouring doesn't put you off, this is a nice, sweet dessert. Especially if you like mango.
Repurchase? J: Perhaps, though I didn't think it was exceptional. It was fine, but not amazing. B: I really enjoyed this gelato, and would purchase again.