Chilly Cow Is a New, Low-Calorie Ice Cream Brand That Actually Tastes Amazing

We're more than a little ice cream-obsessed.

When the team behind the brand new, low-cal ice cream brand Chilly Cow reached out to us and asked us if we'd like to give their flavors a try, we pushed away all of our preconceived notions about low-calorie ice cream and eagerly took them up on the offer.

The Products

Chilly Cow products only hit the markets this month. Using ultra-filtered nonfat milk, the company's goal is to create tasty desserts that are low in calories and fat without skimping on the taste.

They come in seven flavors: Brown Butter Salted Caramel, Chocolate Brownie Batter, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, Cookies 'N Cream, Mint Dark Chocolate Chip, Sweet Cream Peanut Butter and Vanilla Graham Swirl. Each of these flavors is available in half-pint containers, while the salted caramel, brownie batter, mint chocolate and vanilla graham flavors are also available in bar form.

The half pint containers each contain between 180 and 190 calories, while each ice cream bar has 100 to 110 calories. That's fewer than half the calories of standard ice creams. But how do they actually taste? We had an office taste test to find out.

 

The Experience

We received samples of every item Chilly Cow has to offer in a big box packed with dry ice in a styrofoam cooler. After popping all of the ice creams into the freezer for 24 hours, we finally got to dig in.

Mint Dark Chocolate Chip

First, we tried the Mint Dark Chocolate Chip ice cream. It wasn't super sweet, but had a nice and creamy, minty finish. The flavor reminded us a bit of a dinner mint. The ice cream was complemented by little chunks of dark chocolate, which were also not very sweet. Overall, the two flavors worked together nicely to create a fresh, minty experience.

Later on, we tried the bar version of this flavor. While it was extremely creamy, the mint flavor felt much subtler than it did in the half-pint container. The chocolate chunks added welcome sweetness, but we didn't enjoy it nearly as much.

 

Vanilla Graham Swirl

The half-pint vanilla graham swirl may be our favorite Chilly Cow flavor. The vanilla was rich and creamy, while the chunks of graham cracker swirl were buttery and added a complexity to the flavor. Though it tasted more like a milk flavor than a strong vanilla, the graham elevated the taste.

However, we weren't nearly as impressed with the bar version. Because the graham swirls were concentrated to the center of the bars, the majority of the experience was a bit bland. Even when we did get to that swirl in the middle, it wasn't as flavorful as the version in the cups. After the great experience we had with the other version of this flavor, we were a bit disappointed in the bars.

 

Cookies 'N Cream

While we usually love Cookies 'N Cream, we were a little divided on this flavor. For whatever reason, this was definitely the crumbliest flavor of them all. While some of us didn't feel that the cookie flavor comes through enough in this ice cream, others loved it and scarfed down the rest of the carton.

 

Brown Butter Salted Caramel

The Brown Butter Salted Caramel was another high-ranking favorite of ours. The ice cream itself was lightly sweet and caramel-flavored, while the stripes of strong caramel throughout were extra buttery with just the right amount of saltiness. Some even may find this flavor too sweet, which we didn't expect from these low-cal ice creams.

But again, when it came to the bars, we had the same expectations and frustrations as with the others. The caramel ice cream wasn't as sweet, and the caramel swirls didn't enhance the flavor like they did in the carton version. The creaminess just couldn't save the flavor of the bars.

 

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough

We were excited to dig into the Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough flavor, but something about the flavor seemed a little bit off to us. Eventually, we all agreed that it had a slight raisiny taste. While the cookie dough chunks spread throughout tasted fine, we wouldn't rank this flavor at the top of our lists.

 

Chocolate Brownie Batter

While two of us in the taste test group aren't the biggest fans of chocolate ice cream in general, we both actually really liked the Chocolate Brownie Batter flavor. It's super chocolatey, while not being extremely sweet, and felt like exactly the same texture as a full-fat chocolate ice cream. It tastes like a dark chocolate ice cream, and the bit of salt in the brownie swirl balances it out well.

This flavor also comes in a bar form, and we have to say, it's our favorite of the four bars. The subtler chocolatey flavor works better than the other flavors in this form, and we felt we could actually taste the swirls of brownie batter.

 

Sweet Cream Peanut Butter

If you like peanut butter, you're going to love this flavor. While the sweet cream flavor isn't that sweet, it appears to have a light peanut taste of its own and wonderfully complements the swirls of peanut butter. Though the peanut butter did freeze more than the surrounding ice cream and became hard to cut through, we thought it was worth the effort.

 

Bottom Line

Chilly Cow ice creams can be really tasty. Though we enjoyed some flavors more than we liked others, they deliver on their mission to taste great without all of the calories.

However, they don't taste identical to traditional ice creams. If you're looking for an extra decadent snack, this might not be the right dessert for you, though it's just the thing to satisfy a craving for a certain flavor of ice cream. They also have cute messages on the foil you peel off before you eat them, which is a plus in our books.

We also have to say that we'd avoid the bars in favor of the ice cream in the half-pint containers. We prefer the stronger flavors, and even if you can't control yourself and eat the whole thing, you're still consuming fewer than 200 calories. Overall, we believe we'll be buying this brand again in the very near future.

 

If you're ice cream-lovers like we are, click HERE for Instagram captions of all of your ice cream pics.