Last week I was invited along to Sainsbury's HQ and their Food Innovation Centre in London to take part in their #DeliciouslyFreeFrom Iced Desserts 'FreeShake' Masterclass. When this invite popped into my inbox I was really excited because not only was I yet to try their new vegan friendly Iced Desserts, but also because this event just sounded like so much fun! I've also surprisingly never enjoyed a vegan 'Freak Shake' before so I was really looking forward to learning how to make my own.
On arriving at the venue my levels of excitement just grew, especially when I saw just how beautifully styled the venue was and all of the delicious looking treats on display. They'd certainly catered very well for all of the Instagrammers in the room!
The key products of the evening were the Sainsbury's Deliciously Free From Ice Desserts trio which include the flavours chocolate, strawberry and vanilla. Sainsbury's have been working very hard behind the scenes on these ice creams for quite some time and it was really interesting hearing from the team just how much work goes into creating the perfect tasting free from ice cream. All in all these Iced Dessert's are wheat, gluten, milk, egg and soya free (hooray for the all of the soya intolerant vegans out there!).
I was really looking forward to trying these Iced Dessert's for myself as, despite spotting them recently in Sainsbury's freezer section, I hadn't previously tried them before. We were soon presented with the trio in a bowl to have a taster before we moved onto making our Free Shakes. First off I was so impressed with how these tasted - basically exactly like ice cream! They were all really delicious and their light and fluffy iced consistency was really impressive. Enjoying all three together is also something I would definitely recommend all of you to try as it was just like a Neapolitan ice cream! Yummy! And extremely moreish.
Soon enough it was time to move onto making our own Deliciously Free From Free Shakes and I decided to go with the chocolate flavoured Iced Dessert to form the basis of my own shake. The shake was created by adding 500g (1 tub) of Chocolate Iced Dessert with 250ml of Sainsbury's Sweetened Coconut Milk Alternative into a blender and blending for around a minute.
Once I had my glass of Free Shake it was time to move over to the exciting part of actually decorating it with a variety of treats and turning it into something more freaky!
There were so many vegan friendly sweet treats on offer along with a wide variety of decorations, it was actually quite hard deciding what direction to go in with my shake but rather than deliberating for too long I just dived straight in. As the event was for a mix of free from food bloggers, not only vegans, they made it super easy for everyone by labelling each food item with their dietary information.
My Deliciously Free From Free Shake ended up incorporating a real mix of different flavours, i.e I just went in for a bit of everything! Ultimately I ended up with a chocolate, strawberry and Bakewell cake skewer, with a couple of chunks of chocolate thrown into the shake, and all topped off with some mini marshmallows.
On reflection, and as soon as I saw how crazy everyone else had gone, I regretted not adding more onto my shake! But ultimately I was pretty happy with how it looked and I can also confirm that it tasted delightful.
Once our shakes were finished we were able to have a play around photographing them and making use of the pretty backdrops the team had set up for everyone.
We also then had an opportunity to create our own little mini slow mo video for Instagram which was so much fun and really well organised.
I was so happy with my video!
After all of that excitement it was nice to just mingle with all the other bloggers there and take a look at some of their own creations. I absolutely loved how crazy some of the Free Shakes looked!
All in all it was a fantastic event and I'm very grateful that Sainsbury's invited me along to be a part of it. I'm also so happy I finally got to try the Deliciously Free From Iced Desserts for myself and they're definitely going on my shopping list next time I go to Sainsbury's!
Why not have a go at making one of your own vegan Free Shakes!?
I'd love to see your creations if you do give them a go so be sure to tag me in your photos!
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