Top Nondairy Frozen Desserts

The Tasters Choice panel in the San Francisco Chronicle put their taste buds to work on eight vanilla-flavored frozen desserts, five of them soy-based, two rice-based and even one cashew-based.

The results were the so-so "it's good for what it is" that milk alternatives seldom rise above.

Overall, though, the tasting panel didn't like these desserts much more than they did the last time around. Many were too sweet, or had odd textures or flavors. ...

The top desserts were all soy-based. The winner was Whole Soy Co. The panel commented on its "coconut" flavor, saying they liked it "but it's supposed to be vanilla."

On a scale of 100 being perfect, the panel's scores were:

Whole Soy 65
Tofutti 61
Soy Delicious 55
Fruit-Sweetened Soy Cream 51
Freezees 32
Soy Delicious Purely Decadent 31
Soy Dream 26
Organic Rice Dream 22
So Delicious 20
Good Karma Organic Rice Divine 18

Freezees is the cashew-based dessert, one that's new to me. It "came in fifth and scored poorly, but drew a lot of interest because of its distinctly nutty flavor, as if slightly salty nuts had been mixed into vanilla ice cream."