I’ve seen and tasted my share of great locally made ice cream flavors. I used to work at Formaggio Kitchen South End and boy did we get lots of delicious ice cream- even just the samples that would come in were always unique and fun.
When I heard about Honeycomb Creamery, I wasn’t expecting to see so many new and unique flavor combinations but man am I impressed!
Founder Kristen Rummel was kind enough to share a little with me about Honeycomb Creamery and here is some of what she told me.
Kristen’s first twinkling of a business idea
When in college, someone asked me about my dreams. If I could do anything, what would I do? Even though I was studying mostly romance languages and literature, I told him that I really wanted to open my own bakery. I didn’t know more than that, but I loved baking, cooking and food science so much that I couldn’t imagine my life without it.
I then went to the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts for a semester to give myself the confidence to throw myself into Boston’s growing and evolving food scene. While in school, I went out to dinner one night and ate corn ice cream. Life changing moment! I began making all sorts of ice creams at home and giving them away to friends and family.
The next two years were a lot of research and ice cream eating. Then, at the beginning of this year, I decided that I should just throw myself into forming this business.
Kristen on the naming of Honeycomb Creamery
Quite a few people ask the meaning behind our name- mainly to clarify if there’s honey in all of the ice cream. Well, we’re really in love with waffle cones. We knew that we wanted to make different flavors of waffle cones to go with our ice creams. It just so happens that an old proto-Germanic word for waffle also means “honeycomb of bee.” I couldn’t resist the connection. We hope to one day get waffle irons specially made for us so that all of our waffle cones look like honeycombs.
Kristen on the local Boston food scene
We’re always asked where the ideas for our flavors come from. Other than our imaginations, we always say that working with local farms and restaurants, seeing what they’re growing and making, gives us so much inspiration. We try very hard to use local, in season ingredients and purchase locally where we can. We’ve started collaborating with a lot of different local businesses, like Follow the Honey and Apotheker’s Kitchen. Also, all of our milk and heavy cream comes from the beautiful Jersey cows of Mapleline Farms in Hadley, MA.
And now, recipe time!
A big thank you to Kristen for sharing some details about her company. In honor of her delicious ice cream and inspired by Honeycomb’s Horchata Ice Cream flavor, I wanted to make something that was based on coconut. This is also convenient for me because I can no longer have dairy, so I still get to celebrate ice cream in a unique way. I am so inspired by Honeycomb’s flavors that I may try to recreate more of them down the road! I also wanted to sneak in some unique ingredients, so get ready.
Coco-A-Choco Ice Cream
Makes about 4 cups
Equipment: ice cream maker
1 can coconut milk (13.5 oz)
1 ripe avocado
1 ripe banana
2 egg yolks
¼ cup honey
1 heaping Tbl almond butter
¼ cup plus 1 Tbl cocoa powder
¼ tsp fresh vanilla (scraped from a vanilla bean), or sub ½ tsp vanilla extract
Pinch sea salt
1 Tbl coconut flakes
¼ cup dark chocolate chips
Make sure your ice cream maker bowl has been frozen in freezer for several hours.
Pour coconut milk into a small saucepan and heat over medium, stirring occasionally, until steaming and almost bubbling. Don’t boil.
Mash avocado and banana in a mixing bowl, then whisk in egg yolks and honey.
When coconut milk is hot, very slowly pour it into the banana mixture, whisking as you go. Don’t pour too fast.
Add the almond butter, whisk to combine.
Pour the entire mixture back into the saucepan, and heat over low heat.
Slowly sprinkle in the cocoa powder, gently whisking as you go.
Add vanilla and salt, continue to gently whisk until small bubbles form around edges and mixture is steaming, but do not boil.
Pour mixture into a bowl (ideally one that has a pouring spout) and place in fridge to cool.
Once mixture is cool, set up ice cream maker, pour mixture into bowl and churn on low for about 20 minutes until ice cream resembles soft serve.
Add coconut flakes and chocolate chips, stir just a few times to mix, then pour into freezer safe container and freeze until solid.
Enjoy and don’t eat the whole thing in one sitting!
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