Bonnie:  With dreams of warm weather returning in a couple months, we’re sharing a frozen treat with you today. A sorbet can be a refreshing ending to a meal or as a palate cleanser between courses. They’re made from fruit or fruit juice and sugar and so are light, generally fat free and refreshingly good.  Sherbet is different, as it is dairy based and may also contain egg whites or gelatin.

We’ve selected the Jolly Llama Raspberry Sorbet Squeezups as this week’s FeaturedBite as it tastes just like the fresh raspberries it’s made from. It’s packed in a squeezable, portion-controlled tube that you can enjoy on the go — although I’ve served it after a meal and no one knew I had squeezed it from the tube into a dessert dish!

Jolly Llama makes Sorbet Squeezups in five other flavors that include Peach, Banana Coconut, Blueberry, Strawberry and Mango. All are low calorie (70 to 80) and fat free, except the Banana Coconut, which contains 100 calories and three grams of fat.  The raspberry, by far, is the best tasting.

The refreshing raspberry sorbets contains 50 percent of the recommended daily intake of vitamins A and C and three grams fiber from added corn fiber, which doesn’t affect the taste or texture.

Bryan: In my world of focus groups, a surprised look accompanied by the phrase, “that’s actually pretty good” is a very positive result. It was this exact reaction from one of the people in my office while recently sampling the Jolly Llama Raspberry Sorbet Squeezups that let me know there was something special about this product.

Writing a food blog means that I have the unusual opportunity to try a number of interesting food products each year. The people in my office also seem to like the fact that I write a blog, because many of the products featured on Bite of the Best have also met their palates, as they are my own personal taste-test focus group.

The surprise of something “actually” being good has to be taken within this context. Actually, of course, means that the product is “actually” something earning high regard. The surprise is not derived from Jolly Llama specifically being good; the brand had no preconceived negative bias in the group. It’s just that I am constantly giving my office colleagues new products to try, and most of them aren’t actually that good (it’s only a rare few that make it to BOTB). So, on average, they get to try a lot of junk. This is how I know when something is really good… When the reaction is “whoa, I like this one!” “Actually” stems from the fact that only one out of 100 products they try actually makes it to our site.

So why Jolly Llama Sorbet Squeezups? Well, because Jolly Llama’s treats are made with only healthy, highest-quality ingredients. Working at a gourmet restaurant, founder Scott Jacobson created more than 400 unique sorbet flavors before he wondered why he couldn’t do the same thing just for supermarkets. Utilizing his family’s ice cream cone business as a test kitchen, Scott converted his restaurant recipes into retail-ready food products. July 2009 marked the beginning, when Northern California Whole Foods stores became the first group to sell Jolly Llama Sorbet Squeezups. Luckily, this cold treat spread like wildfire and you can now pick them up nationwide at a natural foods store near you. It’s raspberries, pure and simple. No artificial flavors or colors. And it’s “actually” pretty darn good….