[By Nick, discontinued] Besides Kefir, Lifeway sent me over some Frozen Greek Style Yogurt as well. Yes, Lifeway has jumped on that bandwagon with everyone else. Really all we need now is Haagen-Dazs to join in and pretty much all areas of the freezer aisle will contain some sort of Greek yogurt. Back when they released the 3 new flavors of Frozen Kefir, they also expanded their portfolio by churning out 3 varieties of Frozen Greek Style Yogurt. The flavors are Blood Orange Swirl, Chocolate Swirl and Honey Swirl. They only sent me over the first two so my apologies to all the honey fans out there. Like their Frozen Kefir line, these also offer a slew of health benefits. Each serving has 110 calories, 1 gram of fat and 6 grams of protein with 99% lactose free as well as gluten-free.
Now the flavor that really peaked my interest was the Lifeway Blood Orange Swirl Greek Style Fro-yo. Chobani’s Blood Orange Greek Yogurt has to be one of my favorite Greek yogurts. Seeing this flavor being made into a frozen product really excited me.
I don’t normally comment on the packaging (I need to work on that) but I do like the greek style pattern around the rim of the container. It’s a small touch but it adds a lot to the appeal of the product. I don’t get the whole soft serve in the bowl though. I know it’s called swirl but it looks as if it is swirled with vanilla so wouldn’t scoops make more sense seeing as this is a scoopable product and not soft serve?
Opening this one up I was a bit taken aback. With swirl in its name, I thought it was supposed to be swirled with vanilla, sort of like a creamsicle would be. If there’s no vanilla swirl then what is the swirl component? Well looking though the ingredients shows that there’s a blood orange swirl throughout. Oh how I wish companies would just be more descriptive with their labeling.
As you can see, it more resembles orange sherbet. As for taste, it doesn’t deviate much from orange sherbet either. The tang you expect from the blood orange is pretty tame. If I hadn’t known otherwise I wouldn’t have thought it was blood orange at all. Actually the more I think about it, the more it reminds me of orange juice. The ingredients list does mention orange juice concentrate so that could be what I’m picking up. That’s not a bad thing but not something I want in a blood orange product.
The blood orange swirl doesn’t do much either. Sure it makes some bites tangier but it’s not something all that noticeable. The consistency is just like sherbet as well (I think you see the trend here). It’s slightly creamier than sherbet but it came out in chunks instead of being able to be scooped smoothly. Another thing to note, I ran into a lot of air pockets in the pint which is never a good thing. All in all, I’m pretty disappointed by this one. It had so much potential but fell short of the mark.
Next up is the Lifeway Chocolate Swirl Greek Style Fro-yo. Just like the Blood Orange container it shares the same Greek pattern around the rim and just replaces the orange soft serve with chocolate. I still don’t get the point of the soft serve but whatever.
Once again I thought this was supposed to be swirled with vanilla but I was wrong. The swirl this time is chocolate (which still makes sense).
Now doesn’t that look like an amazing swirl? Sadly it’s actually pockets in the froyo. It is as if the chocolate swirl melted the base and left dark craters. Tasting the base alone, I’m struck by a sour chocolate taste. It tastes like I’m eating frozen spoiled chocolate milk. That is not a good start at all. Thankfully the chocolate swirl adds enough sweetness to counteract the sourness. It lacks any bitterness and works to provide an all-around milk chocolate taste. Thankfully they were very liberal with the swirl so you’d be hard pressed not to get a good amount of it mixed in with every bite.
From a consistency standpoint, it barely edges out the blood orange in creaminess but it still reminds me of sherbet. I know what you’re thinking and the answer is yes, chocolate sherbet is a very weird thing. I’d give this one the nod over the blood orange variety just because it lived up to its name more.
Neither one of these impressed me especially with all the other successful greek frozen yogurt that are out there so I can’t really see myself going out of my way to try these again. I’d still like to thank Lifeway for the opportunity to try them out though and hopefully they improve their line up and add some more interesting flavors.
Verdict? Blood Orange tastes like orange juice and don’t eat the base of the Chocolate Swirl alone unless you enjoy spoiled chocolate milk.
Buy Again? No to both of them
Don't bother trying their frozen Kefir. I tried the chocolate flavor and it was disgusting. It had no chocolate flavor at all. Worse, the company would not refund me and I paid over $4 for a pint.
ReplyDeleteI reviewed 3 of their frozen kefirs that they sent me and found them to be pretty good besides the dulce de leche one. I think they're kefir might be better suited to the fruit type flavors over the more desserts one. If the chocolate is anything like this one then I would be terrified to try it to be honest.
Delete"With swirl in its name, I thought it was supposed to be swirled with vanilla, sort of like a creamsicle would be. If there’s no vanilla swirl then what is the swirl component? Well looking though the ingredients shows that there’s a blood orange swirl throughout"
ReplyDeleteIt says blood orange swirl on the front of the container o.o how'd you miss that?
I thought it meant it was a blood orange base with a swirl. If you were to look at the container, it looks like it has a white swirl throughout. This is why I thought it was going to be mixed with vanilla.
Delete