If your tummy won’t tolerate cow’s milk, but does fine with goat’s, you’re in for a sweet treat this summer. But you don’t need dairy issues to savor a super-rich pint of Laloo's Goat's Milk Ice Cream, in seven exotic flavors plus vanilla. Who dreamt up goat’s milk ice cream, and why?

Laloo’s founder, Laura Howard, a certified Hatha yoga instructor and slow foodie, was following a strict one-year diet without cow’s milk under the guidance of her yoga teacher, who recommended goat instead. Basically, her frozen dessert hankerings soon got the best of her, as did the horrors of industrial dairy farming, and the rest is history. She founded Laloo’s Goat’s Milk Ice Cream Company in the vineyard-covered hills of California’s Sonoma County less than two years ago, and her edible creations have drawn obsessed ice cream extremists ever since.

Fans adore the handmade, decadent flavors like Black Mission Fig and Chocolate Cabernet, as well as the relative health benefits of goat’s milk. Goat's milk is said to be chemically similar to breast milk, having all essential amino acids. Laloo’s ice cream has less lactose, fat, and sugar than the typical premium pint, but its flavors are just as intense as the Haagen Dazs and artisanal set. Its natural ingredients are locally sourced, including fruit, chocolate, Sonoma wine, and growth-hormone-free milk from Nubian goats on Laloo’s own 350-acre farm.

The basic recipe is milk, sugar, and egg yolks, plus whatever adds the flavor. (Disappointingly, the ice creams also contain locust bean gum, guar gum, and carrageenen, food additives that act as stabilizers. In contrast, Haagen Dazs has none of these, although it also has roughly twice the sugar, fat, and calories, and full lactose.) Laloo’s original flavor, Black Mission Fig, remains a source of corporate pride. Its richness recalls gelato, as if someone blended fior di latte into di fichi. Its goaty tang sits just right next to the concentrated sweetness of the organic fruit.

The most piquant goat flavor has got to be Chevre Chiffon, made with fresh goat cheese. Not all flavors are tangy, though. The eyebrow-raising Chocolate Cabernet, with swirls of a local wine reduction and 70% Scharffen Berger bittersweet cocoa, asserts a rich chocolate flavor that’s beat only by the brooding Deep Chocolate (77% cocoa and no swirl). Likewise, Strawberry Darling surprises more with its ribbons of syrupy balsamic vinegar than its dairy. Other flavors include Vanilla Snowflake, Molasses Tipsycake (with savory oatmeal cookie bits), Pumpkin Spice (defiantly offered year-round), and Meyer Lemon Chiffon.

Until recently, Laloo’s was a west coast indulgence only, except via the Internet. According to Howard, die-hard fans have Fed-Exed the stuff to New York—despite its relatively high price ($8 each, four-pint minimum), shipping cost (about $50), and egregiously high environmental impact. Thankfully, Laloo’s can now be bought coast to coast at your local natural food store, gourmet shop, Whole Foods, or Wild Oats.

Laloo’s Goat’s Milk Ice Cream

Cost: $8 per pint

Where to Buy: Whole Foods, Wild Oats, your local natural food store, or goatmilkicecream.com (but please, look deep inside first: you know better than to Fed-Ex your dessert cross-country.)

Photo: Laloo’s Goat’s Milk Ice Cream