The way I see it, there are two issues to getting fruit into your body every single day: to start, although most people realize it’s delicious and nutritious, it can take a back seat to everything else in your kitchen when you’re hungry. Reason number two is that fruit is just fruit. Unless you bake it up or mix it with something, it basically tastes the same every time you eat it.
Unfortunately baking with fruit takes away all of the nutritional value of what you’re eating, and although that apple crumble cake is delicious, you’d have had to add a lot of sugar or other ingredients to it. Once you do that, you can’t really count it as a serving of fruit.
The Canadian Food Guide recommends you eat 5 to 10 servings of fruits and vegetables every day. If you think it’s hard for you to eat your allotted fruit per day, think about how hard it is when you have kids: some love fruit, some hate it, and some will only eat apples and strawberries. I have a few of that variety of children myself.
Add it all up and you have a problem that needs a solution, and after reviewing the Yonanas Classic and the Yonanas Elite Dessert Maker for a week, I’ve found that the solution to getting the entire family to eat enough fruit is to turn it into soft serve ice cream.
The Yonanas makes soft serve from your own frozen fruit, and that means you can make organic fruit soft serve with no sugar, dairy, fat, or extra preservatives. The best part? It really does what it says it does: the fruit comes out in smooth, creamy soft serve anyone will love.
How well do the Yonanas Dessert Makers work? Let’s just say I’ve had a line up behind this machine every single day I’ve had it (and that line up included my husband), and I don’t know whether to be exasperated or thrilled when someone is hauling out the frozen strawberries at 7 am and asking for ‘ice cream’. If it’s Yonanas, you can’t really say no to ice cream at 7 am.
Appearance
I tested two Yonanas dessert maker: the Yonanas Classic and the Yonanas Elite. They both look like small juicers, with a tall tube to put fruit and other ingredients inside. The difference between the Yonanas Classic and the Yonanas Elite is size and power: the Elite is 30% larger and more powerful than the Classic. After using both, I’d recommend the Classic if you want to use the Yonanas for a small family and the Elite if you want to make soft serve at parties or for a large family.
Storage space is a big consideration in my kitchen, so I did the cabinet test with both of these. I found the Yonanas Classic will fit easily into one of my cabinet drawers, and I had to lay the Yonanas Elite on its side but it still fit fine.
The Yonanas Classic comes in a very striking silver, while you can get the Yonanas Elite in black or candy apple red.
Features
The Yonanas dessert makers do exactly what they say they will do: make soft serve from your own fruit. Both models are plug and play, so you’ll have your dessert in seconds.
| What kind of ingredients can you add to the Yonanas dessert maker? | Any type of frozen fruit including bananas, pineapple, mango, strawberries, and more. You can also add chocolate and, as we found out, cookies. |
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Is the Yonanas dessert maker loud? |
It’s actually very quiet. I would say the volume was similar to a blender on the low setting. Check out my Vine video below to see how it sounds. |
| Is the Yonanas dessert maker easy to clean? | You bet. The chute, plunger, and blade are all dishwasher safe, so you can just clean them up and put your Yonanas away for next time. |
Testing out the Yonanas Dessert Maker
When we unpacked the Yonanas Dessert Makers, we dove straight into the recipe book. It’s got over 130 dessert ideas and it’s really hard to stop at just one.
You can set up the Yonanas in about a minute. Just pull it out of the box, plug it in, put in the chute, and start adding ingredients.
Because the Yonanas is made by Dole, my mind immediately started reeling with the possibilities of making Dole Whip. But have you ever seen the ingredients list on a Dole Whip? It’s lucky I only have them once or twice a year. They might taste like pineapple, but they contain added sugar, natural and artificial flavours, and a ton of preservatives. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been trying to cut down on my daily dose of preservatives, so making our own Dole Whip without all the junk was our first priority.
Armed with a bag of frozen pineapple, we made a big bowl of soft serve with the Yonanas Elite. Then I mixed in a ¼ cup of fresh whipped cream and blended it together in the bowl. Did it taste exactly like a Dole Whip? No, but it definitely was close enough that we all really liked it. The whip cream had added sugar so that might have helped a bit.
We also tried the Yonanas with different fruit combinations: strawberries and banana, banana and mango, and strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries. You just put the fruit in and it ejects nice, thin ribbons of soft serve. The only thing you have to remember is follow the recipe book when it comes to how to layer your ingredients. If you’re making a banana/cookie combo like I did, you need to add a chunk of banana, a chunk of cookie, and so on.
Each recipe I tried was easy and really delicious. You wouldn’t think banana/fruit/cookie combos would be so yummy, but they really are. There are so many different combos you can try you’ll never get bored of eating your fruit. Take a look at my Vine video for how it works.
Overall thoughts
By far the best reason for me to own a Yonanas is that it got my very picky 6 year old to try all sorts of fruit. He’ll eat an apple and the occasional strawberry, but he would never touch a banana, a mango, or even raspberries. With the Yonanas we blended it all up, told him his ice cream was ready, and he was thrilled.
The Yonanas dessert makers were a hit in my house, and this is one kitchen appliance I’m putting on my Christmas list this year. It’s easy to use, clean up is a breeze, and I love that I can control the ingredients in the desserts my family is eating.
Just don’t be surprised if they ask for dessert for breakfast. In this case, that’s a good thing.
Christmas is coming and the Yonanas would be a great gift for anyone who’s interested in healthy desserts. They’re availalbe right now on Bestbuy.ca.
