Wink Frozen Desserts has gone out of business. If you’re looking for dairy-free, low calorie ice cream, then you might like one of these options: Enlightened Dairy-Free Ice Cream, O’My 2g Sugar Gelato, Halo Top Dairy-Free Frozen Desserts, Snow Monkey Superfood Ice Treat, or So Delicious Frozen Mousse.
Just prior to trialing it, I read many mixed reviews online about Wink Frozen Desserts. As I soon discovered, the varying opinions were for good reason. Which is why I’ve opted to skip a star rating on this review from us. Instead, I’ll provide enough details about Wink Frozen Desserts to help you decide if these pints might be right for you. And you can read the star ratings and reviews below from dozens of people who have purchased Wink.
Wink Frozen Desserts are extremely light. They range from just 25 to 75 calories per serving. They also have as little as 0 grams of sugars, 2 grams of protein, and 1 gram of fiber in each 1/2 cup. Select flavors have up to 4 grams of sugars and 4 grams of fat.
So what is in them? One sample ingredient label contains the following: water, pea protein, vegetable glycerin, organic agave inulin, organic flavors, organic tapioca, monk fruit, baking soda, xanthan gum, organic stevia, guar gum.
As you might suspect from reading this profile, Wink Frozen Desserts don’t taste like your typical ice cream. With no top allergens, added sugars and fat, they have an overall vibe that is notably off from the norm.
The consistency of Wink Frozen Desserts is closer to a sorbet than an ice cream. It’s scoopable, but a bit icy. As it melts, it does appear thicker, but then it has a slightly gelatinous mouth feel. If given the choice, we preferred it straight from the freezer, fully chilled with that slight icy edge. The picture below does a fantastic job of showing the different textures.
The flavor names on Wink Frozen Desserts imply a potential flavor rush, but the taste of each is actually very mild. For most of the pints, our tasters didn’t even come close to guessing the flavor. As you can see from the ingredient list above, they rely heavily on “organic flavors”, rather than flavorful ingredients that may add to the calorie or sugar count. Honestly, I’ve never seen “flavors” so high up on an ingredient list!
Since Wink Frozen Desserts are less full-bodied than most, and are sweetened exclusively with sugar-free, natural sweeteners, they do have a different underlying influence. For those who are stevia “super-tasters” like me, you may find the stevia and monk fruit combination off-putting. However, if you follow a sugar-free diet or use sugar-free sweeteners often, then the flavors might hit your taste buds just right.
We sampled bites of each flavor and our hands down favorite was the Caramel Candy Apple. We didn’t taste the apple, but the warmer caramel notes helped to mellow the stevia sharpness. Our second choice was the Black Cherry Cacao Nib. Yes, of course we picked two of the higher calorie ones! The base was mild, but did have a cherry influence that we could detect. And the generous smattering of cacao nibs were a nice surprise. But still, these pints are very unique, and didn’t fall in the ranks of ice creams we would purchase again.
What to Do with Leftover Wink Frozen Desserts
This is an update to help avoid waste of these pricey pints. If you aren’t a fan, try blending them into smoothies. Use a frozen banana and some peanut, nut, or seed butter to mellow the flavor and increase the richness without adding sugars (aside from naturally occurring ones).
The photos were provided by Wink Frozen Desserts. Unlike many other products, their photos are quite accurate. What you see is what you will get! Please keep that in mind and take note of the unique melt and icier consistency.
The Facts on Wink Frozen Desserts
Certifications: I believe Wink Frozen Desserts are Certified Vegan, Certified Gluten Free, Certified Kosher Pareve, and Non-GMO Verified.
Dietary Notes: By ingredients, Wink Frozen Desserts are dairy-free / non-dairy, egg-free, gluten-free, nut-free, peanut-free, soy-free, vegan, plant-based, and vegetarian. Nonetheless, check with the company on their manufacturing processes for all varieties if potential allergen cross-contamination is an issue for you. Processes and labeling are subject to change at any time for any company / product.
For More Product Information: Visit the Wink Frozen Desserts website at winkfrozendesserts.com.
worst ice cream i have ate
too vegan for me it is gay!!!!
Used to be great, ruined in Dec 2016, but I still miss it
I just really miss the original Wink and wanted to leave a review. I first tried Wink in June 2016 and became OBSESSED with it, ordering large amounts despite the high cost. Back then I had to travel a lot, and whenever I would visit a new city I would rush to the closest store that had Wink and buy some… it was that good!
Yes, it didn’t taste exactly like regular ice cream, but the taste was just really light. It had a pleasant light sweetness and creaminess to it. I usually improved the flavor by manually mixing in some additional monk fruit, salt, cinnamon, etc. which helped a lot with the taste without upping the calories much! But I didn’t mind it on its own either.
It was amazing that it was vegan, sugar free, and only 100 calories, without any artificial sweeteners or erythritol. There is still nothing like it on the market today.
I lost a large amount of weight eating this product. My weakness has always been snacking on sweets in the evening. Instead of my usual sweets, I could eat a few whole pints of this stuff and feel so indulgent and still be fairly low on calories! And I have a very sensitive digestive system, but due to the careful selection of ingredients in this product caused me no digestive discomfort. To this day, I am not aware of ANY other vegan dessert that has all the properties Wink did (vegan, sugar free, low calorie, digestively safe, etc.)
Unfortunately, things started to go south in December 2016 when Wink changed their formula to replace xanthan gum with flaxseeds and locust bean gum. The texture completely changed from something light but creamy to something super icy. It was nearly identical to a snow cone in texture. This ruined one of the main things loved about Wink (the creamy texture). In addition, all the flavors tasted basically the same, whereas before things like Cake Batter and Vanilla Bean tasted very different and much more different from each other. I immediately reached out to Wink, notifying them that this would turn off a lot of customers and potentially lead to the failure of their company. They wrote back nicely, and even sent me the remaining pints of the old formula until they ran out of every flavor in May 2017. But they decided to stick with their new “improved” (ha) recipe. I really never got used to the new flavors and shortly afterwards moved to an area that they were not sold in.
Now I see all the bad reviews from 2019 and the closure of their company around November/December of that year, and I understand completely but it makes me sad. I can’t help but miss the way they used to be (especially since I need to use a few pounds haha). They were a good company that made some bad decisions but also produced products that met a very real need. They didn’t deserve the hate they got.
Thankfully I just got a new compressor ice cream maker! I am going to try to “copy” the Wink ingredients to see if I can reverse-engineer their original recipe and see if I can make something even better 🙂
Excellent Frozen Dessert for Diabetics
I discovered this product at a Diabetes Expo years ago and I buy it every summer. It is great to have a summer drink that won’t elevate my blood glucose level.
bad not good
bad
Love this stuff
This is wonderful. I like the flavors (I’ve tried Pumpkin Spice, Vanilla and Cocoa Mint) and don’t feel guilty eating these.
come on folks...
what do you expect? they’re super low in calories for ICE CREAM.. so i mean, come on. taking that into consideration, they’re THE BEST. i liked the cake batter a lot. you have to melt them a bit though, like let them sit for a min. too bad they went out of business, likely from all the people who expected creamy, delicious, decadence.. sorry, not for 100ish calories y’all.
Tasted like frozen saw dust
I just found a new entrant into the keto ice cream market (it is excellent by the way) and it made me think about Wink…it was the most awful product i have ever tasted….i threw away every last one of the……i was sure Wink had to be out of business…the flavor profiles were just awful.
No Stars (but they made me put one on to submit review)
This was a total waste of money….and very expensive! I will never buy Wink again, and I will never recommend it to anyone. Totally blah. I thought strawberry would have chunks of the fruit in it, but no. It is the most bland tasting frozen “whatever” that I have ever tasted. Very disappointing, to say the least.
Disgusting product and business practices
Wink had a deal for $50 worth of product for free shipping, so I bought it. Especially because of all the ‘reviews’ that made it seem too good to be true.
It came nicely packaged, with dry ice and instructions. We had to wait a while to let it soften before we could try it. Like about 30 minutes on the counter.
We tried the Strawberry–tasted like lipstick. The cookies and cream, like milky water, every pint was just INEDIBLE.
So, I cut the losses and chucked the $50 worth of ‘ice cream’.
Then, I saw an ad pop up for the same deal and a person asked if anyone had tried it. I responded that I really wanted to love it, but the taste was not for me. That’s it….nothing nasty, no urging to save money….just a candid comment.
Instead of reaching out…they BLOCKED ME! Can you believe that? That is why there is such a disparity between what you see here on Go Dairy Free and what you see on Facebook–WINK turned off their reviews so no one can share the truth.
So, not only is their product disgusting, so are their business practices.
So much potential-so little taste
I bought and consumed several containers of Wink 100 calorie pints. Wink 100 calorie dessert is the absolutely worst mock ice cream product I’ve ever eaten. However, there is a niche for the 100 calorie product. They need to revamp and make their product palatable. I make my own product and it’s better than theirs. I wish they were close to Des Moines–I’d help them!
63 Comments
I was super excited to try this!! Once I finally got some I quickly found out This is NOT edible! I threw them away! How could you sell a product many dislike?? What a Waste of money. And most negative comments get deleted… why??….cover up…??? Reviews tell you how your product tastes. Many don’t like it! Back to the drawing board. Take the feedback as a learning curve and stop trying to hide the truth!
Hi Matt, we’re not affiliated with Wink or any other food companies. This is a third party review that you have commented on, and I’ve never deleted any of the comments on this post.
It is cold and melts but that is as close as it gets to ice cream I did not expect it to be exactly like ice cream but it is just not good. The strawberry cheesecake was just not edible. The vanilla and chocolate were bearable but I agree with previous reviewers who paid a ton for this stuff and feel compelled to eat it. I would not order it again. I used Walden Farms calorie free syrups to cover it up but that really did not help. Maybe chopping up a banana would make it taste better. Oh yeah – maybe some bacon? How about a brownie? Yeah I guess not…..
I PAID FOR TWELVE PACK ,GOT IT TODAY, MOST AWFUL TASTE IT REMINDS ME OF MOTOR OIL TASTE,WISH I HAD READ REVIEWS I WOULD NEVER HAVE ORDERED IT, I UST THREW 40 DOLLARS AWaY ,NO ONEi N MY HOUSE WILL EAT IT, ITS AWFUL.DONT SEND ANY MORE .I thought the chocholate would tase ok but oh Gog it was awful.
Wish I would have seen this before I ordered. It is horrible tasting!!! Don’t waste your money
in 48 years i have never tasted anything more disgusting.. please don’t feed this stuff to people.
By far the worst thing i have ever eaten
I wanted to thank you for being so kind and for keeping in contact however I do want you to know that ALL of the ice creams I received are very bland and have little to no flavor and all taste the same for the most part. I am very disappointed that I wasted my money on it but in all reality didn’t expect much since everything that makes ice cream taste so good is not in it. But thank you for the effort. Hope you had a nice Thanksgiving 🙂
Hi Trinity, I’m not sure who you are trying to reach, but Go Dairy Free isn’t affiliated with Wink. We are an informational site!
Ordered 6, just tried the pumpkin spice latte version, which I did let sit out for almost an hour to get to the right consistency. It is disgusting. Maybe not even worth taking up space in the freezer. I will try one or two other flavors as I ordered an assortment but I suspect that this is all getting thrown out. If you are reading this review and thinking of ordering, you are way smarter than I was. Should have read the reviews first/
I wish I could add a positive story about this stuff but cannot. Couldn’t wait to get home to try and really was disappointed at best. On the bright side, I did add some sugar free almond butter and splenda for sweetness and got the “ice cream” sensation I was looking for. I have a hard time throwing things out so will continue to come up with new “additives” but odds are will never purchase again.
80.00 and several days of anticipation to finally enjoy this ice cream like dessert. Yuck. I ordered 6 different flavors. Took 1-2 bites of 3 of them. Can’t take it. I’m gonna try it again tomorrow. I’m not picky at all. I’ve been on Keto 3 months. This stuff tastes awful. Gonna try to eat it because I paid 80 dollars for it!!
Just terrible.
The word “vile” comes to mind. What a waste!
We bought Wink’s ice cream for a sleepover but decided to try it first. THANK GOD WE DID!!!! My father, who will eat food off the floor, had to spit this vile “dessert” into the sink. The rest of my family felt similarly. The only time I would ever buy this product again is if I wanted to make myself throw up. Don’t waste your money; the only thing you get out of this ridiculously expensive price is a bad aftertaste and a funny story to tell your friends about that time you ate really, really bad ice cream (substitute).
We read about this and since we are doing Keto, we rushed into our local natural foods store and bought the last 3 pints- all were cinnamon bun- the girl said they are selling out like crazy so I stupidly thought it must be good. Now I can only attest to the Cinnamon Bun flavor but it was AWFUL. Bitter, icy, fake tasting- I took one bite and threw it out along with the other 2 unopened ones. I hope for everyone else buying them that the other flavors are better, but I def won’t be trying others anytime soon. Ugh- I tasted that horrible aftertaste for an hour afterward. If you are going to try it- don’t try the cinnamon bun!
Total waste of money. Horrible taste! I threw all of it in the garbage can ?
Wink tastes like medicine you know you are going to hate but you have to take except in this case its ice cream and you don’t have to take it – you’re just upset you bought $40 worth of it. SO BAD
I am on a low carb diet and saw these while looking at halo top cam accross wink. This stuff taste like crap. Maybe if i was a vegan or had allergies it would be satisfying but im not. I should have looked more into these instead of just getting excited about 1 net carb. I would recommend not buying unless you have allergies or are vegan. Taste like terrible flavored ice.
Horrible! They taste like dirty dish water. I can handle the gross texture, but they are so lacking in flavor. RUN from this product, do not waste a PENNY.
I was so bummed out at how gross this stuff was, I obviously didn’t expect it to taste like real ice cream, but it was just terrible 🙁 Lesson learned and 5 bucks poorer.
This is absolutely horrid. The flavor we tried tastes like a drier sheet(vanilla). Don’t even want to try the other flavors at this point. 🙁
Oh gosh! I love a lot of sugar-free desserts so I thought that maybe some of the reviews might have been off due to an aversion to Stevia or perhaps the small amount of sugar alcohol. However, this is not the case. These are the most atrocious disgusting vile things I have ever tasted in my life. These are ridiculously expensive and a complete waste of money because you not only have to pay for the product you then need to pay for the trash bag to put it in. Do yourself a favor and stay so far away from this nasty stuff.