Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams | Blog

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This year we thought it would be fun to shake things up a little at our stores. My favorite way to eat ice creams is in a sundae. So, I thought “what would my perfect sundae be?” and I decided that it would be three things:

1. It would be lots of flavors, textures and temperatures in one bowl.
2. I would have the option to make a big sundae (call it a “somedae:) or a small one.
3. It would have emotion and personality that reflected my own tastes at that moment.

In our kitchen we’ve been making various streusels for ice creams over the years. These streusel-like crumbles hold up great in ice cream—better than a true cake (which often gets crushed). So we mimic flavors in a brownie or cake, but do it in a smaller crumble form. Then chuck it into the ice creams. For our Loveless Biscuits + Peach Jam Ice Cream we made a biscuit “crumble” to swirl into the ice cream with our homemade peach jam. That way the biscuits don’t get too soft and fall apart in the ice cream. How can you not love a crumble that has the flavor and personality of a baked good? If you’ve seen Christina Tosi’s excellent book, Momofuku Milk Bar, then you know what I’m talking about. Crumbs are fun. Inspiration abounds. Possibilities are endless.

While filling out my sushi-style ice cream dessert menu at Zero Zero in San Francisco it dawned on me… for summer, we’ll make several beautiful single-note ice creams, a few thrilling sauces, but, instead of having cakes and pastries to go on ice cream, we’d make our crumbs or streusels in pastry flavors—like we do when we put them IN ice creams—for toppings! And we’ll call them Gravel. We’ll also let you put sauces, Gravel and accoutrements on any size scoop of ice cream. These components would satisfy the first two requirements for my “perfect sundae,” but how could we give each sundae personality?

The answer is: WE don’t, YOU do.

For summer, you can build the sundae of your dreams with these components: our single-note ice creams, our sauces, and our Gravels—all available in any combination. The possibilities are literally in the millions. The most exciting part of the whole project—besides the shear deliciousness of it all—is that you get to choose what goes into your sundae, you get to name it, and add your creation to our fan-made menu by tagging a photo of it #jenisgravel.

For suggestions or to see what other people are doing, check out the photo menu at gravel.jenis.com—you can order from it, or add to it.

It’s not about the individual components, but the sum of its parts—the “flavor” you give it by naming and tagging it #jenisgravel.

For a few lucky winners this summer, we are going to pick our favorites and make art-quality prints of their unique creation like these!

Happy graveling.

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Our “single-note” flavors for spring and summer are simple, yet incredibly delicious. They’re all great by themselves in a cup or cone, but they really pair beautifully with a variety of fruits, pies, cakes, sauces, and ice creams.

Let’s have a closer look.

1) BANANAS + HONEY: Fresh, ripe bananas blended with aromatic Ohio wildflower honey and luscious, grass-grazed Snowville cream. It’s like the best, creamiest frozen banana pudding ever.

Trio suggestion: Bananas + Honey, Double-Toasted Coconut, and Dark Chocolate.

Here’s how we make it:

Fresh, perfectly ripe bananas at the peeling station:

Bananas peeled by hand:

Ohio wildflower honey from Amish farms in Ashland, County, Ohio, blended with peeled bananas:

2) CLOVERTON: Cloverton cheese, a cow’s milk cheese made at Laurel Valley Creamery (two hours south of our Columbus kitchen on the Ohio River), blended with luscious grass-grazed Snowville cream. It’s like a light, deeply flavorful cheesecake (minus the crust). Cloverton cheese is like cream cheese but tastier, and it goes great with fruity frozen yogurts and straight-up fresh fruit. (Farmstead cheese, by the way, is cheese made from milk produced on the same farm.)

Trio suggestion: Cloverton, Bananas + Honey, and Salty Caramel.

Here’s how we make it:

Laurel Valley Creamery delivers their wonderful Cloverton cheese, which is like a sweeter, fresher-tasting cream cheese:

Sugar and Snowville cream is mixed and poured over the Cloverton cheese in bucket  (not pictured) and blended:

The mix is strained, then separated into buckets:

Once more cream is added and blended with the cheese-and-cream mixture it’s added to the ice cream machine to freeze and emerge as Cloverton ice cream:

3) CHAMOMILE: Chamomile prairie flowers steeped in grass-grazed cream. Rich and buttery, with the comforting aromas and flavors of apple bran muffins and Chardonnay. Ice cream mix is heated in our kettles, poured over Chamomile flowers, and steeped like a cup of tea. Chamomile is a daisy-like flower whose name is derived from Greek for “earth apple”—which is why the aroma and taste reminds most people of apples. It’s aroma and taste is soothing and calming, which is why it’s typically used to make a decaf tea.

Trio suggestion: Chamomile, Riesling Poached Pear Sorbet, and Whiskey & Pecans.

Here’s how we make it:

Chamomile flowers are prepped:

Chamomile is blended with heated grass-grazed cream to steep:

Chamomile that’s been steeped is strained through fine mesh, then more cream is added and blended with the steeped chamomile. Last, the mixture is added to the ice cream to work its magic and from it flows Chamomile ice cream:

4) DOUBLE-TOASTED COCONUT: Grass-grazed Ohio cream with flecks of chewy, nutty, caramelized coconut throughout. We don’t technically toast the coconut twice as the flavor name suggests; we double the usual toasting time to thoroughly toast the unsweetened coconut to an even, golden brown. Sea salt is added to enhance the nuttiness of the coconut.

Trio suggestion: Double-Toasted Coconut, Salty Caramel, and Dark Chocolate.

Here’s how we make it:

Unsweetened coconut is put on trays and toasted for 20 minutes (and stirred throughout the toasting):

Toasted coconut is then poured into buckets:

Coconut essential oil and salt is stirred into to the coconut to enhance the flavor:

The coconut is mixed with more cream, then put into the ice cream machine and voilà—Double-Toasted Coconut ice cream:

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In addition to Bananas + Honey, Cloverton, and Chamomile ice creams, there’s something else new today in our scoop shops. It’s a two-fisted dynamo that screams Let the sunshine in, and we call it the Mango Frozen Yogurt with Pistachios Macaroon Sandwich.

Yes, the name’s a bit of a mouthful, but so is this sunny, tangy, and savory combo: custard-like Mango Lassi Frozen Yogurt banded in toasted pistachios and stuffed between chewy almond macaroon cookies. As usual, the cookies are made completely from scratch and hand-piped and baked to glorious perfection by our A-1 kitchen team.

Yum, yum, eat ‘em up.

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If you’re browsing jenis.com today or visiting a scoop shop or grocery next week and beyond, you’ll notice a flavor called Ndali Estate Vanilla Bean.

Ndali Estate Vanilla Bean is the new name of Ugandan Vanilla Bean ice cream. Same recipe, same flavor, new name.

We changed the name to more explicitly reflect the partnership we enjoy with Ndali Estate and Lulu Sturdy and her team of growers. The African vanilla beans they grow and hand select are exquisite. They contain the most vanillin crystals, which are the rare white crystals that form on the outside of the finest vanilla beans. Lulu reserves these extra-special beans for us and makes extract from them on site at Ndali, then ships it straight to our kitchen. We are the only importers of this amazing vanilla in the United States.

Jeni says, “There is no doubt that the vanilla from Ndali is the most-gorgeous, roundest, and full-bodied vanilla flavor and scent that I have ever tasted—and I’ve certainly had my share of vanilla over the last 19 years in the ice cream business.”

This is no plain old vanilla ice cream. Jeni calls it voluptuous.

“It has a rich, strong vanilla scent and velvety texture,” she says. “It’s great with almost everything on our menu and it’s also fantastic by itself.”

You can read more about our partnership with Lulu and Ndali Estate in Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home.

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