I ate 11 Ice Cream Sundaes in 3 weeks

Here is Part 3 of 3 of the events I shared with Deborah Moore this morning on AM1470.

#SundaeChallengeYVR

A month ago I was asked to participate in something that was both delightful and daunting at the same time - to be one of the media judges in this year's Vanfoodster Sundae Challenge. I was delighted because you know I'm a big, and I mean BIG fan of desserts. On the other hand, it was daunting because I tend to shiver like a little Chihuaha all year round regardless of the temperatures outside. In any group setting, I'm guaranteed to be the one person in the room wearing the most clothes all the while asking for the heat to be turned up or the AC to be turned down. Putting the shivers aside, I have also been trying to stay disciplined on my diet. As you can remember from my recent post about how I lost my 5 pound "dessert weight", my goal was to eventually lose 7 pounds in total. I did ultimately lose 6 pounds so I was of course a bit weary about eating 11 sundaes in a span of 3 weeks. Nevertheless, this was not called a sundae challenge for nothing. I decided to embrace it head on with a game plan.

How to Eat 11 Sundaes without Gaining Weight

I devoted certain days to eat 2 sundaes in a day. Instead of eating them on separate days, the days when I ate 2 sundaes were my "cheat days". I made sure they were in the same areas and I would walk to these shops. Most of the time it took over an hour to reach each shop in the sweltering late summer heat so my plan had a two-fold effect. I would burn calories and warm myself up before eating each delicious cold treat. I felt it was a dubious plan but incidentally, my scale ran out of batteries when the challenge started so I had no way to see if I was on or off track with my weight. More on that later.

What makes a Great Sundae Creation?

After tasting each sundae, we were asked to give each creation a score from 0 to 40. 10 for originality/uniqueness, 10 for presentation and most importantly taste which accounted for half the overall score at 20 points.

Every creation had a special name and some even had little stories which added to its originality. For example, the Earth Sun and Stars by Umaluma featured black vanilla ice cream with gold flakes which represents the stars in the sky and the Akbar Mashti ( tradional Iranian saffron ice cream) represents the sun.

An attractive presentation was also important since sundaes are presented as sum of it's parts - ice cream and fixings like chocolate, syrup, candy, sprinkles etc. And mind you, some were really flashy like the three tiered ice cream bubble waffle creation by Tmix Tea; some had a more elegant appeal like the Summer Pavlova by Beyond Coffee - a dainty pastel colored concoction that featured soft purple blueberry ice cream on top of a snow white meringue nest filled with lemon curd.

Lastly, taste was deemed most important and the sundaes that I finished completely on my own usually received the highest score in that department for me. Calories cannot be wasted when you're dieting! 🙂

Take a look at each sundae and when you're done, head over to Vanfoodster's page to see if your pick was crowned the winner for this year's challenge.

Final Weigh-In

I finally bought batteries for my scale and did a little weigh in. I gained 2 pounds from the 6 that I lost. It was worth it and I'm just glad it wasn't more than that since some of the creations were so good, I finished them all by myself. This post got me thinking again and I think I will be back for another sundae sooner than later.

I hope you enjoyed my sundae journey. Until our next dessert date.

XOXO,

Mimi