One of my favourite treats since developing a serious soya allergy has been the two coconut ice creams on the market. They are both dairy, gluten, soya and nut free. Hoorah!
I buy them both and they are delicious. Real melt-in-the-mouth indulgence for anyone who can’t eat ‘normal’ ice cream.
So how do they compare?
Coyo raw chocolate coconut ice cream
Coyo make really creamy dairy, soya free yogurts as well as this delicious ice cream.
I found it froze almost solid so I needed an ice pick to chip out bits but it tastes devine, just remember to get it out well before you want to eat it.
It really does take 45 mins to soften.
Maybe that’s just my freezer?
Ingredients : Coconut Milk, Organic coconut nectar, cacao, xanthum gum.
It’s made in a completely nut free, dairy and soya free facility so you can be sure it’s safe. A little birdie told me that Coyo are releasing a new smaller tub size soon and also some very appealing new flavours; pine colada and mango and lime.
NB: The recipe has been improved since this testing and the ice cream is easier to get out of the pot!
Bessant and Drury
Choose from chocolate, vanilla, lemon and raspberry flavour (there may be more, these are just the ones I’ve tried) and you will have a taste sensation for every dessert. Delicious with fruit or just on their own straight from the tub.
It’s soft enough to scoop easily and anyone would enjoy this. It is so luxurious nobody would know it was ‘special’ ice cream.
What’s inside? The ingredients for the strawberry flavour are: Coconut milk, concentrated apple juice, strawberry puree, glucose, sugar, chicory root, xanthan gum, strawberry flavour.
Booja Booja also do dairy free ice creams but if you have a nut allergy these are probably not for you. Most that I looked at contained nuts and those that don’t will contain a nut warning. I haven’t tried them, obviously, but I have heard good things about Booja Booja.
Swedish Glace make very nice soya based dairy free ice cream which I also can’t eat due to a soya allergy. However I used to be able to eat this and it’s pretty damn good. Very tasty and friends and relatives who were served it didn’t know it was dairy free!
You can buy these at some supermarkets, Waitrose often stock them and good health food shops.
Great summary. I have tried some of the Bessant & Drury ones and some Booja Booja. The latter has a weird texture/ aftertaste but, like many free-from foods, “is better than nothing”! I adore Coyo yogurt so will be looking for the ice cream version, to give it a go. And I agree with you on the Swedish Glace: in my opinion, it’s probably the best ice cream substitute out there in taste terms, but I too avoid soy.
Do you know what I find crazy? You can no longer find sorbet out there. Just plain, natural sorbet with nothing but fruit, fruit juice, sugar (& maybe one other ingredient, like pectin or something). As a kid growing up in America, I went through a phase of addiction to Haagen Dasz’s range of truly divine raspberry, strawberry & even blueberry sorbets (and I wasn’t even dairy free, then). As recently as a couple years ago I saw either the same or similar in a local Londis shop, but now all they have in dairy free is the Bessant & Drury, which is fine as an ice cream substitute, but it still has a lot of unnecessary ingredients if you’re looking for the clean, pure taste of a fruit sorbet. At Waitrose there’s nothing in the way of sorbet that doesn’t also have traces of milk or — can you believe this — WHEAT glucose syrup (What?? It’s so easy to make a to-die-for sorbet with no more than 3-4 ingredients; WHY do all these people add ALL THIS JUNK to foods??? But that’s a question I find myself asking every time I pick up a processed food item. I should just stop looking in stores and buy my own d@&n ice cream maker…).
Anyway, thanks for the article! This is a topic (clearly) very near to my heart! 😉
Where did all the sorbets go? Such a healthy alternative too. I get annoyed in restaurants when they have a sorbet option, but when they check the ingredients it has dairy in it? Why? Why? I hadn’t realised till you pointed it out but it’s been a very long time since I had sorbet. I am on a mission now to find some that I can eat. I used to love sorbet and summer is coming so what better excuse.