Lazy Vegan Friday – So Delicious CocoWhip

I’m in New York City right now, and one of the things I love doing whenever I’m in the USA is finding products we don’t have in Toronto. A few months ago I started seeing So Delicious‘ CocoWhip appearing on friends’ and bloggers Instagram feeds and knew… I must try some. So my opportunity came this week when I saw one of the varieties (the regular variety with the blue label, as opposed to “light” in the pink label) at a Whole Foods (the one at Columbus Circle) in New York City.

It has always been strange to me that “non-dairy” whipped toppings would have dairy ingredients like casein, a milk protein, (usually in the form of sodium caseinate) or other things, but it’s nice to have a similar product from So Delicious that is actually 100% dairy free. I’ve had some disappointing experiences with non-dairy dairy-filled whipped toppings, so here is hoping So Delicious brings this product to Canada sometime soon. Especially since MimicCreme has disappeared from our shelves (Since the company closed in November 2013 due to no longer having access to an appropriate production facility), and sometimes I just want an easy to use tub of whipped topping vs having to whip something for 10 minutes. (it’s called lazy vegan friday for a reason.)

What’s in it?

Cocowhip is gluten-free, vegan, kosher, and made with organic ingredients.

At the time of this post information about Cocowhip is not available from the So Delicious website. I like to post the exact ingredients of a product I try anyway, mostly out of curiosity, and having a record of how products change and evolve over time.

Ingredients: Water, Organic Coconut Oil, Organic Tapioca Syrup, Organic Dried Cane Syrup, Pea Protein, Guar Gum, Organic Sunflower Lecithin, Natural Flavours, Xanthan Gum.

Nutritional Information

The nutritional information is pretty basic, and there aren’t any major outliers. I’d be curious to see what the Cocowhip “light” variety looks like, because this doesn’t seem like an exceptionally high calorie point for the significant return on flavour.

What did we think?

Over the course of my time here, I have tried it a couple of different ways – on mixed berries and on hot chocolate. It is quite multipurpose, fluffy, and flavourful. There is a definite hint of coconut, with notes of vanilla, and general sweetness. The strange thing about this product for me is that they recommend it remain frozen, but fresh out of the freezer it ends up with a slightly higher density than I like in a whipped topping.

In advance of using it, I usually stir it a whole bunch to warm it up a touch, and have had relatively positive experiences leaving one tub in the fridge.

When I opened the Cocowhip it looked like this:

In the interest of accuracy, I haven’t fluffed it up, and it didn’t look beautiful, but I was ready to cover a bowl of fruit with it anyway.

Action Shots

Regardless of its appearance, I may have taken a small spoonful and put it directly in my mouth. For science. And let me tell you, it was good. So good in fact, that I immediately put several dollops of Cocowhip on my beautiful bowl of berries, and ate it right up.4

It seems like an absolutely natural pairing for berries, and reminded me a lot of the whipped topping my mom would make (from heavy cream and vanilla sugar) to put on berries when I was a little girl. So, there is that – the taste of delicious nostalgia.

The day after the bowl of beautiful bowl of completely out of seasonberries, it snowed, and typically, when I think snow (or icy rain) I think… hot chocolate. So here is some Westsoy Chocolate Peppermint milk topped with some Cocowhip and a touch of cinnamon.

I’m not quite sure what I was expecting from this product and a hot beverage, but the cream doesn’t quite melt into the hot chocolate in the way you might expect or want, or remember from other whipped creams you may have known and loved. So it is worth managing your expectations on that front.

Over all though, JC and I both really liked it, and it seems to be a versatile enough product with a variety of potential uses. It was also on sale 2/$7 at the location we visited, so the price wasn’t bad either.

So what else can you do with Cocowhip?

I’ve seen some interesting recipes appear online using cocowhip, two standouts were the Vegan Tiramisu Trifle from Vegan Richa, and the Pina Colada Cheesecake from Spa Bettie.