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: Chapman's "Raspberry Sorbet"

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

Oh my. Where to start. From the time we purchased this product to the time I sat down to make this review, I feel like our experience with Chapman's Raspberry Sorbet has turned into a saga of epic proportions. The highs were high. The lows were low. Words cannot possibly describe the fiasco that is Chapman's Raspberry Sorbet. Well, actually, I suppose they can. Let me tell you the story...

It all started prior to the Thanksgiving weekend. Because the family dinner was going to be held on the Island, B's sister (whose name also starts with B - because our parents are creative - and who will be referred to using the colour green: B) was going to be visiting, and she was excited to help us review an ice cream and thereby make a guest appearance on the blog. When the day finally came to choose an ice cream, we searched high and low for Island Farms green tea flavor, but could not find it anywhere. So instead, B selected what we all thought would be a safe and most likely delicious flavour: Chapman's raspberry sorbet. We were all very excited to take this product home and enjoy it.

The packaging is appealing enough. We certainly appreciated that this sorbet was clearly marked as being fat free, cholesterol free, peanut free, lactose free, and gluten free. If you have allergies, or will be serving something to a large group of people whose allergies may be unknown, like a children's birthday party, this would be a safe bet.

 The first thing I noticed when I took the lid off the container was that I could smell the sorbet. Which is kind of odd, because normally frozen foods tend not to have much of an aroma. But the sorbet in question had a distinctive smell of something akin to koolaid or fruit punch or bubblegum. Something artificial. Hmm. I guess that's OK. And it looks relatively normal. I mean, sure, it is a rather shocking shade of magenta, but rapsberries are quite a colourful fruit. When we scooped it out, it had a relatively soft and "fluffy" consistency, similar to the texture of the other Chapman's flavour we had previously tried, Hokey Pokey. It kind of feels like it has gelatin in it, and after consulting the ingredients, though it did not contain gelatin, it did contain five different types of gums.

So the only thing to do at this point is to taste it. We divided a few scoops among the three of us and took a bite.

For starters this thing...tastes exactly like it smells. Which is not like raspberry. Which is not a good thing. For something that is based on a tangy fruit, this sorbet displays no tartness whatsoever. In fact, it's incredibly sweet. It has a kind of artificial raspberry taste to it, which is odd because the ingredients say that it contains actual raspberry puree. We found no evidence to support this, though we did find plenty of evidence of "natural flavour" that was added. We don't really understand why, if you are using a fruit that is as flavourful as raspberries, you would be inclined to add chemical flavouring, even if it's "natural." The taste reminded us a lot of bubblegum, or of blue raspberry flavoured candy, like a Ring Pop. Which is fine for candy, where the expectation of realistic flavours is minimal, but when you purchase a sorbet that proclaims to use the actual fruit it's pretty awful.

When we began testing this sorbet, we tried to be open-minded about the product. When we tried to consider the ideal consumer for this sorbet, we kept going back to the idea of kids, as the flavour is very sweet and candy-like. B said that the "flavour is OK - I wouldn't stop eating it, but I wouldn't buy it again." Not long after, however, she had changed her mind: "I retract my previous statement! I want to stop eating this right now!" She followed this comment up by saying "I feel like I'm eating... packs of gum! Bubble tape!" which, considering how many gums are in the thing, isn't a totally unreasonable assessment. We offered a spoonful to my mother to taste, and she was as excited as we initially were to try a raspberry sorbet. Mere seconds later, however, she had spit it in the sink in disgust, proclaiming it to be "slimy" and bad-tasting. 

So far, this flavour was leaving an extremely bad taste, not to mention alarming colour, in our mouths. But the story doesn't end there...

We noticed that on the side of the container there was a "satisfaction guarantee" followed by a hotline number to call. Well, we were extremely dissatisfied with this product, and since we were going to post about our dissatisfaction on the internet, we figured it would be a good idea to give this number a call. This is a brief summary of what transpired:  A very kindly female representative repeatedly assured us that the Raspberry Sorbet is indeed made entirely from natural raspberry puree and that it is one of their top selling items.  She implied something might have been wrong with the container of Sorbet we had purchased as she could not imagine we would have found it as sweet and artificial as we did.  We expressed our extreme dissatisfaction with the product and relayed the spitting of a sample into the sink and were asked to provide our contact information to receive some sort of compensation in the mail.  This compensation has yet to arrive of course, and so we will have to update later regarding the details.

After trying this flavour one more time before writing this review, we found that time had not altered our opinion of it, and so the rest of it was washed down the kitchen sink. Thus concludes the saga of the Chapman's Raspberry Sorbet. Until, of course, we receive some mail from Chapman's.

Recommend to a friend? Like we stated earlier, the only possible market we feel might enjoy this would be children, because of the candy-like taste and the lack of allergens. For anyone who actually enjoys raspberries, however, avoid like the plague.
Repurchase? J + B: you could not pay us enough to eat this again! So awful!

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.

Nanaimo: Waterfront Confections

With J away for a week in her home town, I had to find another temporary partner in crime for the sampling of ice cream. Luckily, I was able to convince my friend K that what we really needed after a day at school was some ice cream. And since the weather was nice, we decided to go down to the downtown waterfront promenade (boardwalk?) just past Maffeo Sutton Park to sample some ice cream from Waterfront Confections.

 This little shop is both an ice cream and a candy store. They have an excellent selection of modern and nostalgic sweets, including a good variety of imported licorice treats. K is a real candy connoisseur, so I'm sure he will be back at some point to check out the candy again, but for now we came for ice cream.

Although there are three shops on the promenade that serve ice cream, Waterfront Confections is the only one that makes its own ice cream on site (the others scoop brands like Island Farms that can be found at the grocery store). They had an interesting selection of flavours including the standard chocolate and vanilla, to tiger (my sister's favourite regardless of maker) and white chocolate-raspberry.

No matter how many times I rotate and save this image, it is still upside down...

But you get the idea.

 K opted for a triple scoop in a waffle cone. He chose white chocolate-raspberry, black cherry, and bubblegum. When asked why he chose those flavours, he said that he enjoys eating food that does not look natural in colour, and in that regard I think he made a good choice.

According the K, all three had a nice flavour. He appreciated that the bubblegum did not have pieces of gum in it, as usually when ice cream manufacturers opt to do this, the gum is of poor quality, and it's hard to chew gum and eat ice cream at the same time. The black cherry ice cream had a good quality of fruit in it, and the white chocolate-raspberry was probably more white chocolate than raspberry but captured both flavours well enough.

For my cone I chose to go with wild blackberry sorbet and seaside caramel.

Blackberries grow like weeds around here, so being able to find local wild blackberries should be relatively easy, even if it might be a pain to find enough to make this flavour regularly. The taste of it reminded me of a light blackberry jam flavour that wasn't too sweet or too tart. I chose seaside caramel, because since we were right by the water, I thought it would be appropriate to select one of their ice creams named with a nautical theme. (I believe one of the others was chocolate barnacle swirl, or something to that effect...obviously containing no real barnacles) Seaside caramel was a very buttery caramel taste and though I'm not sure it combined well with the blackberry sorbet, it was still very nice. I would buy both flavours again.

In conclusion, if you're looking for some ice cream and a nice stroll by the docks, skip the other places on the promenade and go to Waterfront Confections, where you can get home-made ice cream to top off your trip to the seaside.