Salty Caramel

Above: the back of the chalkboard at our North Market scoop shop. It's what our Market team sees before and during every shift.

All of our shops are dear to us, but our shop in the North Market is extra special. It's where everything "Jeni's" was born in 2002. It's where I began to learn about ingredients, business, and the process of making ice creams way back in 1996 (with Scream, my first shop).

The merchants at the Market are my second family. They taught me everything I know about food, service, and business. They know that the quality of each business epitomizes the Market experience as a whole and, therefore, we all hold one another accountable. It’s what makes the Market such an awesome and amazingly vibrant place.

The words on the sign in the photo above are on the opposite side of the chalkboard menu at our shop in the Market. Out of sight of all Market customers, the sign is meant only for the eyes of the Market scoop shop team.

I discovered the sign one night earlier this week, and when I did, well, I got a little choked up. Our Market shopkeeper, Colin, wrote the sign to inspire his team, but it inspired and made my day. I thought it might do the same for you.

We have amazing people like Colin throughout our business. People like Colin give us the strength to do everything we do. Colin does great work every day, but I felt that this—an open display of affection that makes you feel really good—went above and beyond.

I hope you are inspired by Colin’s love and leadership. I am. It just shows that you can get things done, rock the world, and be wonderful at the same time.

As we approach Valentine's Day, Askinosie Chocolate, our kindred spirits from Missouri, are in the national sweets spotlight. For good reason, culinary authorities can't say enough great things about Askinosie's latest bean-to-bar masterpieces.

Bon Appetit reports, "Beautiful packaging doesn't upstage the beans—the primary focus of this outfit's output," while Saveur declares:

"Any chocolate bar from this lusciously delicious (and fair trade) bean-to-bar line created by lawyer-turned-cacao guru Shawn Askinosie would make an excellent Valentine's Day gift. But his latest flavor, conceived with Valentine's Day in mind, is a special collaboration with Jeni Britton Bauer of Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams: a complex milk chocolate bar blended with malted milk powder."

The Dark Chocolate + Malted Milk Bar, by the way, is available in all of our scoop shops and jenisicecreams.com.

Happy Valentine's Day, friends, and keep up the great work, Shawn and everyone at Askinosie Chocolate.

Above: Gravel Road ice cream recreated by adding chopped smoked almonds to scoops of Salty Caramel ice cream.

Gravel Road fans, we know you're out there, and we know you'll be saddened by the departure of Gravel Road from our menu. That's right, we've bid adieu to sweet, savory, and crunchy Gravel Road.

But do not fret! Gravel Road, by a different name, is Salty Caramel with chopped smoked almonds.

In your own home, recreating Gravel Road is as easy as adding chopped smoked almonds to a scoop of Salty Caramel ice cream.

In our shops, recreating Gravel Road is as easy as asking one of our friendly ambassadors to add chopped smoked almonds to your Salty Caramel. (It's only 50 cents.) 

And, if you own Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home, Gravel Road instructions are on page 102.

Above: Gravel Road ice cream recreated by asking your friendly shop ambassador to add smoked almonds to your scoops of Salty Caramel.

Friends, as of today, we have five new delicious additions to our menu:

• Banana Curry Cashew Macaroon Sandwich (available only in shops)
• Pineapple Upside-Down Parfait (available only in shops)
• Gooey Butter Cake ice cream*
• Lime Cardamom Yogurt*
• Roxbury Road ice cream*

*These Signature Seasonal flavors—flavors that return to our menu every year—are available in scoops and pints in our shops and are available nationwide at jenisicecreams.com. Gooey Butter Cake and Roxbury Road are being sold by our retail partners throughout America. Please check with your favorite retailer to see if they are carrying the two new flavors, and if they aren't, by all means, make a request.

Read on for more about the five new additions to the menu:

Above: The Pineapple Upside-Down Parfait. Layers of buttery vanilla sponge cake, sweet pineapple-caramel sauce, Gooey Butter Cake ice cream and Lime Cardamom Yogurt topped with savory toasted and salted pecans, freshly whipped cream, a rich Italian cherry, and a lovely waffle wedge.

Above: The Banana Curry Cashew Macaroon Sandwich. Curry-scented, subtly sweet banana honey ice cream—edged with salt-toasted cashews—between almond macaroon cookies tinted with turmeric.

Above: Roxbury Road. Dense and dark milk chocolate ice cream is studded with Krema's crunchy smoked almonds and handmade, melt-in-your-mouth marshmallows. Made-from-scratch caramel sauce is swirled throughout. We call it a devilishly rich detour from the world's tame and traditional rocky road ice creams.

Above: Gooey Butter Cake. Buttery, Ohio-honeyed ice cream, layered with chunks of homemade vanilla sponge cake that is enrobed in our made-from scratch caramel sauce. The delicate and light, yet sturdy, cake perfectly balances a sweet and hearty ice cream. 

Above: Lime Cardamom Yogurt. Tart and zesty lime juice in perfect harmony with the natural tang of organic yogurt. Exotic cardamom, with notes of citrus and pine, adds the perfect dose of floral perfume. (A couple of notes on this flavor: We use a heavenly blend of organic yogurt from Seven Stars Farm in Pennsylvania and grass-grazed milk and cream from Snowville Creamery in Southeast Ohio.)

In central Ohio and looking for cool way to start your weekend?

Check out Ohio's Sweet Hearts: A Tasting of Ohio's Sweets Paired with Libations from the Heartland & Beyond. The tasting/benefit will take place from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Friday at the Hills Market.

In addition to live music by the great Salty Caramels, Jeni will be on hand, as will our Mobile Dipping Division, which will be serving up—you guessed it—splendid ice creams.

Proceeds from the benefit will be donated to Mended Little Hearts, a new support program for parents of children with heart defects and heart disease.

Read all about the benefit and the deep roster of participants here.

See you at the Hills!

Above: Taste testing my new cake-saturated flavors, which will be available nationwide March 2.

On Friday March 2 we will release five cake-saturated ice creams that draw from cultures from around the globe. I’m as excited about the new flavors as anything I’ve made since I opened Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams in 2002.

We originally had planned to release the cake-saturated collection tomorrow, but after making large-scale batches of the new ice creams, I decided they weren't cake-saturated enough. It was a decision neither I nor anyone here took lightly. A lot of time and money, not to mention grass-grazed cream, went into making the ice creams we’d prepared to send out into the world. Test batches of the new flavors were laden with cake. Scaled-up versions of those recipes—as great as they were—just didn’t contain enough cake. Simple as that.

After 10 years in business, everything we do here truly remains done by sight, smell, and taste, and I am proud of that. We use our senses, not calibrated, pre-made mixes. We use ingredients no one else in the world uses. Making ice creams the way we make them allows us to make the best ice creams possible and, more important, allows us to constantly improve the ice creams we make every day.

Each time we make a new collection of ice creams we learn a bit more about our singular process of making ice creams. Making ice creams is learning about making ice creams. Experimentation always brings new challenges and leads to new techniques. If we want to push what’s possible (and we do), then we have to be OK with the occasional setback (and we are).

Once again, look for our cake-saturated collection Friday March 2. Believe me, the wait will be well worth it.

To more pleasures,

Jeni

P.S. And in the meantime, beginning tomorrow, enjoy our super-popular Seasonal Signature flavors Roxbury Road, Gooey Butter Cake, and, my personal favorite, Lime Cardamom Yogurt (pair it with scoops of Cherry Lambic Sorbet and Dark Chocolate).

Early next month, Jeni will unveil five new eye-popping, cake-saturated ice creams—ice creams derived from the sights and sounds of far-flung lands, including Iceland.

Iceland—home of Bjork, viking descendants, and skyr ("skeer")—is also home to Human Woman, a duo with a trippy little electro-pop song enhanced by a psychedelia-drenched video (above).

At Jeni's headquarters, a new collection of flavors on the horizon always means it's time to compile a set of songs that jibe with the collection's vibe. Human Woman makes the cut, as does a cast of others we'll share today through the new collection's debut Friday February 3.

Enjoy!

P.S.

For the record, and for all music geeks everywhere, Human Woman includes Gisli Galdur, of the Icelandic band Trabant, and producer Jón Atli Helgason, a.k.a. Sexy Lazer (!). 

Well, if Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home is going to be knocked out of the running to win Food52's 2012 Piglet Tournament of Cookbooks battle, we're honored to read today that the responsible party is The Art of Living According to Joe Beef: A Cookbook of Sorts. We've been passing that great book back and forth since it landed on Jeni's desk.

Many thanks to Food52 for including Jeni's in the tournament and to judges Dorie and Josh Greenspan who wrote:

"You need these books. Both of them! These two books are completely, fundamentally, never-the-twain-shall-meet different from one another, but they're both must-haves.

"Note to the Piglet people: At some point in our lives we may forgive you for assigning us books that are both so good that choosing between them caused family feuds and sleepless nights."

Read the Greenspans' entire report here.

For more information about the great Joe Beef book, check out this video.