The new non-binary snacking: Yo-Chi frozen yoghurt with… just about anything!
If you go back a couple of decades, yoghurt had a reputation for being bland. The epitome of health – but bland as a blank canvas. Today, of course, there are thousands of varieties of yoghurt; in fact whole freezer sections dedicated to the good stuff in just about every supermarket.
And then there’s frozen yoghurt.
Yes, delicious, creamier, just-as-good-for-you frozen yoghurt. So popular is this spin-off, that “fro-yo” outlets have sprung up in shopping malls and supermarkets the globe over. Heck, even Netflix series The Good Place deemed frozen yoghurt so worthy that you could spot a fro-yo outlet on just about every street corner.
But back to real life, one of our favourite brands of frozen yoghurt would have to be Yo-Chi – the Melbourne born brand that opened its first venue in Balaclava in September 2012 and now has outlets situated right across the country, the latest having opened in Victoria Park, Perth.
Yo-Chi offers a practically guilt-free pleasure with an extensive menu of frozen yogurt flavours including staples like vanilla, chocolate and strawberry, and some of the most exotic flavours we’ve seen this side of the equator: banana, mango, green tea, strawberry cream, salted butterscotch, just to name a few.
Yo-Chi’s toppings are just as adventurous as their yoghurt flavours, with the likes of fresh pineapple, kiwi fruit pearls, Biscoff spread and muesli bar bites all adding texture, colour and flavour to an already fabulous staple.
The great news is Yo-Chi frozen yoghurt is now available in take-home tubs from Coles supermarkets, beginning with five flavours: natural, vanilla, chocolate, wild berry, and salted caramel. Each tub weighs in at 500 grams and retails at $9.50, which, for artisan Greek-style yoghurt, is well worth the buckeroonies.
But, we thought, what about all them toppings?
With a Coles delivery of delicious booty, we decided to turn our hand at playing Yo-Chi creatives, sampling everything in our fro-yo mix (in various sittings, of course) from mini M&Ms, Oreo cookies, and crushed Biscoff biccies to fresh banana slices, blueberries, and good ol’ cereal.
The trick in the mashing of these ingredients is to use two wide spatulas, crushing the candy and choccy and cookies and Yo-Chi together like they mix ingredients behind the counter at a Cold Rock ice creamery. Only you’ll be using the best frozen yoghurt!
The combinations we came up with were amazing: the textures of the cookies, dough, chocolate and fruit juxtaposing nicely with the smoothness of the Yo-Chi frozen yoghurt, now seeing the ingredients melting nicely into a delicious gooey mix.
The great thing about eating frozen yoghurt is that you don’t feel so bad mixing in these other (some might call ‘taboo’) foods. Basically, snacking becomes less of a junk food affair and something closer to ‘healthy’ on the food spectrum. Consider it ‘non-binary’ snacking!
Of course, if you’re less of an adventurous foodie and want to keep things clean and old-school-like, you can always opt for a simpler mix like cereal, raisins and Yo-Chi for breakfast in the morning. Oh heck, who are we kidding? Bring on as many different toppings as you can find, we’ll try it all!
Lisa Andrews & Antonino Tati
You’ll find Yo-Chi frozen Greek-style yoghurt tubs in the freezer aisle at Coles, RRP $9.50 a tub.
CREAM MAGAZINE 
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