The Trader Joe's Frozen Dessert You Can Leave Off Of Your Grocery List

A trip to Trader Joe's means perusing the wide selection of offbeat snacks and treats you can't find anywhere else. For people who can't have lots of dairy in their diet and are still searching for creamy frozen desserts, the store's oat non-dairy frozen dessert sandwiches will definitely be tempting. Sadly, we're here to dash your hopes and dreams with our ranking of Trader Joe's frozen desserts from worst to best. This chilly non-dairy dessert left our reviewer feeling cold (so to speak), and the product came in dead last as a result.

The main issue here is the taste of the oat-based ice cream, which overpowers the treat to the point of despair. "There is no chocolate; there is no ice cream; there is only oat," stated our reviewer, touching on the importance of flavor balance in all foods, even frozen desserts. Oat milk is generally sweet with notes of nuttiness – but in the Trader Joe's product, the flavor is one of overwhelming oat-iness.

Our reviewer was "flabbergasted" in regards to "how [Trader Joe's] got oat milk ice cream to taste so strongly of oat that nothing else could possibly make it through." A look at the product packaging reveals that the oat base of the treat includes dextrose, which is a type of sugar derived from wheat or corn. Dextrose is not quite as sweet as traditional cane sugar, which could potentially explain the imbalance of flavors here. Consider that some other oat milk-based ice cream products are made using both sugar and corn syrup, two highly-potent sweeteners. 

Lest you think that we here at Mashed are alone in our dislike of the product, some Trader Joe's fans on Reddit shared similar sentiments. One user on the Trader Joe's Reddit community likened the taste of the dessert to Play-Doh, while another stated, "The chocolate wasn't chocolate-y enough? And the ice cream wasn't great either." It should be noted that the product did have some fans, but one commenter summed it up fairly succinctly when stating, "We eat a lot of Trader Joe's ice cream, both dairy and dairy free, and this is the only product that I though[t] was meh at best." After all, Trader Joe's has gotten dairy-free ice cream right in the past, so here's hoping this item undergoes a quality overhaul sometime soon.