Here is some news you can use, Jeni’s fans. The location of our next scoop shop will be in the heart of Easton Town Center, and the doors will open this spring. Please stay tuned for details, feel free to help us spread the word, and thanks for 10 years of support.
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Ladies and gentlemen, the curtain rises today on Absinthe + Meringues, an ice cream inspired by the Columbus Symphony Orchestra and BalletMet‘s 100th anniversary performances of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. The performances—March 22 to 24 in the Ohio Theatre—will honor the groundbreaking work with a world-premier ballet by internationally renowned choreographer James Kudelka.
Absinthe + Meringues will send you right back to the debut of The Rite of Spring on May 29, 1913, in Paris. Its foundation is grass-grazed Snowville cream and milk softly scented with absinthe, the once-outlawed libation and anise-based botanical spirit known as the Green Fairy in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Throughout the clean, crisp, and refreshing ice cream are tiny little crisp, sweet, and airy meringues.
The absinthe-laced cream—green like spring foliage and grass—represents the wild side, the artists, the bohemians—enthusiastic imbibers of the Green Fairy at the time. Matcha—finely powdered green tea—gives the ice cream its lovely pale green, spring-like hue, and crisp finish.
The precisely-made meringues represent the traditions of the prim and proper and intolerant-to-change upper class audience of 1913 Paris. The meringues are hand-piped sugared egg whites dried in the oven until they are crispy and cloud-like white, and under the weight of the absinthe ice cream they are crushed and morphed into new forms.
In 1913, The Rite of Spring was a story of life as never told before through music and dance. The work—with envelope-pushing choreography by dancer Vaslav Nijinsky—dealt not with the usual “swans and tutus and elevation,” but “ugly earthbound lurching and stomping.“ The result: fist fights and jeers in the hall, a dent in Stravinsky’s reputation, and the world of traditional music and dance turned on its head.
Absinthe + Meringues won’t likely inspire near riots in the halls and streets, but it definitely will take you back to an exciting era when seismic cultural shifts were afoot.
And now, here’s how we make Absinthe + Meringues:
First, the meringues. We mix egg whites and sugar, slowly beating together, hand-pipe them onto baking sheets, and bake them at a very low temperature until they’re white, crispy, and delicate:
Baked meringues, which later will be added to anise-, matcha-, and absinthe-laced ice cream:
All-natural anise (left) and matcha—powdered green tea for color as well as a clean, crisp finish (right):
Anise and matcha being mixed with a small amount of Absente absinthe—the first legal absinthe in the U.S. since 1912. France banned absinthe in 1914, a year after the debut of The Rite of Spring in Paris. The U.S. banned absinthe in 1912 and lifted the ban in 2007.
Absinthe, a spirit made with wormwood, anise, fennel and other herbs, in its purest form has a high alcohol content. But in our ice cream the alcohol content is .5%:
Snowville’s grass-grazed cream is added the the mixture of anise, matcha, and absinthe (left), and stirred (right):
Left: A mixture of absinthe, anise, matcha, and cream coming out of the machine. Once everything is evenly blended, the cream overpowers the dark green matcha powder, leaving the final ice cream a lovely and light pale green. Right: meringues being stirred into the ice cream. Most will crumble under the weight of the ice cream and when the ice cream is scooped:
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This year, we’re hitting more sweet national events than we ever have, and a big one on the horizon is the sold-out South Beach Wine & Food Festival.
Presented by Food & Wine magazine, the 12th-annual fest is touted as “a star-studded, four-day destination event showcasing the talents of the world’s most renowned wine and spirits producers, chefs and culinary personalities.”
During the festival (Feb. 21-24) we’ll be serving these special new ice cream sandwiches:
We’ll be participating in several private and public events, and the two open-to-the-public highlights are:
Delta Diamond Dishes, Saturday Feb. 23 at Marlins Park
Check it out: entrée stations at a first, second, and third base and home plate. When we were kids, running the bases in a big league ballpark was pretty cool, but walking the bases and eating great food paired with great wine? See ya later, warm and fuzzy childhood memories. You can’t beat this.
Trisha Yearwood Brunch, Sunday Feb. 24 at Loews Ballroom
In recent years, country singer Trisha Yearwood has spent as much time in her southern kitchen whipping up comfort food as she has in the recording studio belting out the tunes. Whatever she has in store is going to please the people, but we can’t wait to get her take on the evening soap opera Nashville.
See you there.
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That’s right.
Today through Sunday Feb. 17, 2013, spend $25 in Homage’s shop at Easton or the Short North and receive a voucher for one small cup or cone of ice cream (or sorbet or frozen yogurt) in any of our scoop shops. (The voucher is valid from the time of purchase through Thursday March 14, 2013.)
And while you’re at either Homage branch, make sure to check out Homage’s sweet new Ohio Is For Lovers sweatshirt.
Happy Valentine’s Day, from all of us at Team Jeni’s and Homage.
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Here’s something special to share with your sweetest on Valentine’s Day—Banana Cajeta.
Available in our scoop shops, in select grocers’ freezers, and at jenis.com, it’s one of the stars of our Valentine’s Day Collection, and it’s made with four main components: Ripe, fresh bananas blended with Ohio honey, grass-grazed Ohio cream, and swirls of sweet and tangy small-batch cajeta from Vermont’s Fat Toad Farm.
For those not in the know, cajeta is a traditional Mexican confection. It’s a thick, sweet caramel syrup made from boiling goat’s milk down with sugar until it caramelizes.
Check it out—bananas are blended with cream and added to the ice cream machine. Once it’s ready, it flows forth, then Fat Toad Farm’s goat’s milk caramel sauce is poured and blended into an utterly divine swirl of goodness:
Banana Cajeta. Yes, please:
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Double-Toasted Coconut is a coconut nut’s dream that instantly transports you to your favorite sunny spot.
In each scoop: exquisite grass-grazed Ohio cream laden with flecks of chewy, nutty, toasted coconut.
Here’s how we make it:
First, we unsweetened coconut is placed on trays and toasted for 20 minutes. We stir throughout the toasting to make sure it turns an even, golden brown:
Unsweetened, evenly toasted, golden-brown coconut:
Double-Toasted Coconut ice cream:
Double-Toasted Coconut: delicious all its own, or alongside scoops of Salty Caramel and Dark Chocolate.
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The new Guava Cloverton, part of our Valentine’s Day Collection, proves that a great ice cream flavor requires few main ingredients—as long those ingredients are top-shelf.
Here’s what we use to make the sunny new Guava Cloverton:
Together, the ingredients taste like a creamy tropical cheesecake, and here’s how we do it:
First, we make the sweet guava jam, which has an intense, concentrated flavor. Pulverized guava is blended with sugar, heated for 30 minutes, set aside to cool, and refrigerated until it’s time to blend it into the Cloverton cheese and Snowville cream ice cream:
Once the jam is set aside, it’s time to make the ice cream with Cloverton cheese from Laurel Valley Creamery, which is near the Ohio River town of town Gallipolis (“Gal-eh-police”), Ohio:
Cream and sugar is mixed then poured over the Cloverton cheese and further mixed together (not pictured). Then we strain the mixture, separate it into buckets, and add more cream:
The cream-sugar-Cloverton cheese combination is added to the machine to freeze into ice cream. Once it’s drawn from the machine, the final step is mixing our from-scratch guava jam into the Cloverton cheese ice cream:
And here it is—Guava Cloverton ice cream:
Enjoy Guava Cloverton atop a waffle cone or solo in a bowl, or try it with scoops of Banana Cajeta and The Milkiest Chocolate in the World.
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Had a chance to check out our Valentine’s Day Collection?
The chocolate superstar of the bunch is Roxbury Road—one of the most labor-intensive flavors we make.
Dense, dark milk chocolate ice cream. Crunchy, salted smoked almonds. Pillowy, from-scratch marshmallows. Swirls of a sweet, buttery caramel sauce.
Roxbury Road, of course, is a play on rocky road, the traditional ice cream that’s made with chocolate ice cream and nuts. Ours is named after a street in Upper Arlington, Ohio, where Jeni graduated from high school. The street is lined with a variety of beautiful houses built in various architectural styles. The street, like Roxbury Road ice cream, is a mishmash of tastes and textures.
We love the flavor by itself atop a waffle cone, or in a bowl with scoops of Salty Caramel and Whiskey & Pecans.
Here’s how we Roxbury Road:
First, we blend light and dark brown sugar with vanilla and salt to make the caramel sauce (which will be set aside to be layered into Dark Chocolate ice cream):
Next, cream is added and the mixture boils for about 10 minutes:
The mixture is stirred to make sure the chunks of sugar dissolve:
The caramel mixture is poured into a container and lemon juice is blended in. Lemon juice prevents fats in the cream from separating:
Below left: Crunchy, salted, rough-chopped almonds.
Below right: Sheets of made-from-scratch marshmallows (prior to being diced into the cubes you’ll find in the ice cream):
Dicing marshmallows into cubes (which will be set aside and added to the ice cream later):
The base of Roxbury Road is Dark Milk Chocolate ice cream. To make it, we first start with top-shelf Dutch cocoa:
Then, we mix Snowville’s grass-grazed cream with the cocoa:
Once it’s evenly blended, we add it to the machine to freeze and morph into ice cream, then draw it from the machine and mix in almonds and marshmallows and layers of caramel sauce by hand:
And voilà! Roxbury Road:
Read more about Roxbury Road and learn how to make it in your own kitchen in the pages of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home.
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Jeni’s Company Band’s big show at Kobo is only a day away.
In the meantime, here are a couple of sweet features about the group and gig from Kevin Joy/The Columbus Dispatch and Chris DeVille/Columbus Alive.
See you there.
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Bust out the datebook—there’s a special event on the horizon.
On Friday Feb. 8 at Kobo, Jeni’s Company Band (featuring members of our kitchen team) will celebrate the release of Flavors From Earth, a 4-song LP recorded to coincide with our “Flavors From Earth” winter flavor campaign. Doors will open at 9 p.m., with the first band playing at 10. Admission is $5.
Joining Jeni’s Company Band will be the sweet Columbus bands Maza Blaska, Sable Spurs, and Weight of Whales—which all include musicians who play in Jeni’s Company Band.
The merch table will be stocked with LPs, but if you can’t wait ’til Friday to snag one, head to one of Columbus’ best record shops, Lost Weekend Records, which is the sole outlet (outside of our shops and jenis.com) that is selling the record.
In addition to the evening of music, our Street Treats Truck will be stocked with ice creams and inside the club we’ll be serving special sorbet cocktails. We’ll have ingredients for just 60 cocktails, so if you’d like to imbibe get there early—when they’re gone, they’re gone. Proceeds will be donated to a group that does great work in Central Ohio, the Columbus Music Co-op.
Now, about those cocktails—here’s the lineup:
Sword in the Stone
Riesling Poached Pear Sorbet pierced with “a sword” (a skewer) and drenched in bourbon (we like Middle West Spirits’ Oyo Bourbon Whiskey, Michelone Reserve).
Lady of the Lake
Ugandan Vanilla Bean ice cream, Cherry Lambic Sorbet pierced with a sword/skewer in a “lake” of Oyo Stone Fruit Vodka.
We’ll see you there.
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