Friends often ask me, “Where do you get ideas for new ice cream flavors?” and the answer is usually that we steal them.  A marketing guy once corrected me, “you should say that you appropriate them.”  That is also true or it may just be an equivocation.

A few flavors are the result of happy accidents, like 3M’s well-known accidental discovery of Postit notes and Adam Simha’s invention of Burnt Caramel ice cream.

Flavors containing grape nuts are popular and they are the result of supermarket visits I made after we first opened in 1981.  I was looking for anything that would stand up well to being frozen in cream.  Most cereals turn to mush but grape nuts are indestructible and after I started making the flavor I learned that I had rediscoverd the Grape Nut pudding that is so popular in northen New England and Eastern Canada and the Grape Nut ice cream that Jamaicans miss so much after moving to Boston. 

Probably most flavors are riffs on existing flavors.  Anything can have chocolate chips in it and almost anything does.  There is plain old Chocolate Chip, Malted Chocolate Chip, Chocolate Chocolate Chip, Coffee Chocolate Chip, Banana Chocolate Chip and Mint Chocolate Chip.   If you use a chocolate sandwich cookie like Oreo or our choice, Hydrox, then you can try vanilla sandwich cookies like Vienna Finger Cookies, or Pepperirdge Farm Cookies.  Dark Chocolate begets Belgian Chocolate and Mocha and then Deep Chocolate and Malted Chocolate and Chocolate Peppermint and Gianduia and Chocolate Peanut Butter and Chocolate Banana.

All of our South Asian flavors came about because of suggestions from customers.  Years ago a proferssor from Harvard set us off on this path by suggesting Saffron and Khulfee ice creams.   Other customerrs from South Asia helped us improve all these flavors.

italian flavors like Nocciola and Gianduia were the inevitable result of travelling to Italy.  We’re still trying to make a Rice flavor as good as I once had at Vivoli’s in Florence.  Cathedrals and gelati represent the high points of Italian culture.

A friend came back from Japan with a Green Tea KIt Kat bars so we began freezing and chopping up KitKat bars and we began paying attention to Kit Kat variations in Japan.  This lead to Malted Kit Kat ice cream and White Chocolate with Lemon.  The green tea Kit kat was explained as a snack given to students during exams because of a pun that translated as “study study.”   Recently I was forwarded an English newspaper article about  Japanese Kit Kat bars and I reccommend it to everyone.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/kit-kat-takes-on-japanese-tastes-1901867.html

Ice cream makers also look at websites for other ice cream makers, restaurants, chefs, pastry chefs and candy makers and it occurred to me that some of what sophisticated pastry people do would work well in ice cream, including the use of salt, hot peppers and surprising spices and herbs.  in fact if you want to play at home you can buy Kit Kat bars and sprinkle them with unusual salts and pink peppercorns.  This is much cheaper than going to Pierre Herme in Paris.

Posted via email from Toscanini’s Ice Cream