Welcome back to our third review in our Vegan Ice Cream Taste Test. If you missed our original blog post, you can read it here to catch up on why we are on this ultimate quest for vegan ice cream. This week we take a look at this local creamery, DF Mavens!
**Please note that our review does not reflect the views of New York University or the Office of Sustainability. We are a bunch of college students who love nature and are looking for a good time
If you have explored the East Village, you probably have walked down St. Marks a time or two and may have seen the old DF Mavens store at the corner of 2nd Ave. While its storefront has closed, DF Mavens is certainly not forgotten and has made its way into many NYC grocery stores. Additionally, DF Mavens is a proud and active supporter of Mercy for Animals, an international non-profit dedicated to preventing animal cruelty to farmed animals.
Sustainability:
While DF Mavens is certainly involved in animal rights, what about sustainability?
Local:
DF Mavens is extremely local and located in Astoria, Queens–how cool! It takes significantly less transportation resources to send pints to local NYC stores. The traveling time is also significantly lower so this produces less emissions, too. We love how local this brand is to NYU but we would certainly like to know where their ingredients are coming from.
Different Non-Dairy Bases:
This isn’t exactly a sustainability point, however, we must praise DF Mavens for their different ice cream bases. While no one in the office has a nut allergy, we certainly know someone who does. DF Mavens has 3 different bases: soy, almond, and coconut milk. Many vegan ice creams have nut-milk as the base of their product which is extremely, but not entirely, inconsiderate of those who do have nut allergies. We loved seeing the variety of flavors in each of the different bases and how DF Mavens really experimented for all audiences.
Price: $5.99
These pints are definitely not too expensive, especially considering the wide variety of flavors they produce and the animal rights activism they do!
Delicious: (rated from 1 to 10, 10 being the best)
Our favorites: New Orleans Praline (soy base) (7.8), Chocolate Almond Fudge (almond base) (6.0)
Different bases, all gluten free, and kosher? Say no more! We deeply enjoyed the New Orleans Praline flavor, it tasted pretty close to dairy ice cream and without the heavy soy flavor. Additionally, we enjoyed the Chocolate Almond Fudge; the chocolate flavor was really strong and enjoyable.
Conclusion
We certainly love trying all of these vegan flavors, but we appreciate local efforts even more! Thank you, DF Mavens, for being a vegan entrepreneur in New York City. Your work doesn’t go unnoticed, we’d love to see what’s new in the kitchen! Additionally, we would love to see DF Mavens incorporate more sustainable initiatives into their business (but hey–we’re bias).
That’s it for this week! Stay tuned for this delicious weekly blog series next week on…NadaMoo!