Lunch with the Milkmade

   It is not everyday that you get to visit New York City. But those days are not such a fantasy far away when one of the Shirey Brothers, Austin, our Head of Research-NYC, Special Ingredient Curator, and Head of Networking, lives there, working there full time for Shireshack and only part-time for his real job. 

   It is also not everyday that you get to meet, let alone sit down with, someone who has cracked the impermeable pages of the New York Times.



(photo by John Makely - MSNBC)



Meet Diana Hardeman. She is the founder/operator of the New York City-based ice cream biz, Milkmade. But she does not run the typical ice cream shop with white walls, colorful design schemes, freezing air, and the smell of vanilla waffle cones. In the summer of '09, Diana purchased a small ice cream maker (a Cuisinart like the one I use), and talked with local farmers and businesses about partnerships. She set up a subscription-based ice cream business, meaning you sign up for a three month subscription and receive three pints of ice cream hand-delivered to your door; she makes two different flavors for each month (flavors that reflect the season: i.e. Red Velvet Cake during February/Valentine's Day), of which you get to choose one. 

   To say it blew up would be an understatement. She currently has a waiting list of over 1,500 people in the NYC area. Unbelievable. Recession? Ice cream does not know what the word means. Nor do I.

   Although other businesses boast their "hand-crafted" ice creams, Diana is the only true claimer of this. Still, with people beating down her door to get her ice cream, she makes her flavors in small batches, and everything sourced locally and naturally. All her ice creams are rooted in creativity and nostalgia, the very two points upon which my own ice cream is based.

   One other thing that sets Milkmade apart and makes her so unique is her faithfulness to local businesses. She lives by the motto "keep it local". And this promotes partnerships and interconnected opportunities for success. She sources most of her chocolates from Mast Brothers in Brooklyn; homemade pop tarts from Pies 'n' Thighs also in Brooklyn. It is this kind of thing that unites a business community, providing everyone involved with advantages.

   Well Diana is extremely busy, what with her growing fame, meeting with people from the New York Times, local businesses, making 20 different flavors in a weekend just to test them out, and let alone crafting 150 pints a month. But she found time in her schedule to sit down over lunch with Austin and I in Hearst Tower, where Austin works for his real/not as important job.

   She began by asking us questions, probably to see where exactly we stood in terms of ice cream making and our knowledge of the art. I like to think we surprised her a bit with how well informed and well versed we are in the art and the processes there of. She did this, I think, to determine whether or not she could talk about why honey makes ice creams icier, or how to make fruit ice creams less icy. Thankfully we passed the test because we did eventually tackle those topics.

   Diana answered all of our questions without a trace of snobbishness or a you're-just-a-small-ice-cream-maker-who-doesn't-know kind of attitude. She was very helpful, and explained different techniques that I am anxious to try this fall. And what I am still most impressed with is the fact that she was willing to sit down with us for over an hour, to explain certain things that will help me in furthering my own flavors and recipies.

   We had the same view and ideas about what and how ice cream is and shoud be. It is about the ingredients. It is not a cookie-cutter recipie that can be applied to every flavor. Fruit ice creams have to be made differently than more substantial ice creams (i.e. chocolate or peanut butter). 

   She was generous enough to bring us two pints (that equallys about $34 for members): Salted Caramel with chocolate cookies and Strawberry Shortcake. The Salted Caramel was a flavor she made for a Google meeting that hired her as one of their daily chefs. Most impressive. 

   The Salted Caramel was one of the best flavors I have ever had. Last week I was in the San Francisco area, so of course I tried the local fare. I went to Bi-Rite Creamery, a nationally famous ice cream shop, and got five flavors (I couldn't leave without getting a complete experience). But what I was most interested in trying was their Salted Caramel, which is their most famous flavor and is what they are nationally known for. Milkmade's blew it away. Bi-Rite's was a bit too burnt and tasted a tad bit smokey because of it. There is a fine line between caramel and burnt caramel, and Diana found this line and now walks it, never straying into burnt caramel or undercooked caramel. She nailed it. It was the perfect blend of sweet and salty, which is one of the greatest combinations known to food. And unlike Bi-Rite, who thought their flavor was well enough on its own, Diana threw in homemade chocolate cookies for a much-needed, well-thoughtout crunch. As I always say, "A crunch in ice cream does wonders for how well it is recieved." It makes all the difference in the world.

   Oddly, I did this same thing several weeks ago before I had tried either of their flavors. With my pint of Salted Caramel from Talenti, I threw in pieces of crushed up Oreo cookies. This is essentially the same thing Diana did. Her homemade chocolate cookies were basically Oreos. A very good combo.

   As I have stated before, I am not big on fruit ice creams. I find them less satisfying than denser, more substantial ice creams like Salted Caramel or Peanut Butter. But Diana gave me something unlike any other fruit ice cream I have ever had. Her technique is simple: more fruit, more fruit, more fruit. Fruit ice creams often come out weak, but by her philosophy, that is impossible. She dumps loads of strawberries into a pot on a stove, pours in cups and cups of sugar, and cooks it down to a sweet, thick, fruit syrup, and then blends it into the cream base. She is rewarded with a deep reddish-pink ice cream that knocked my socks off. (I mean, have you ever seen strawberry ice cream with that kind of color?)

   After retrieving my socks, I dug back in. It was the densist, richist fruit flavor I have ever had (I know that phrase keeps coming up, but I can say nothing less about this ice cream). The shortbread pieces, from SCRATCHbread in Brooklyn, were like little pockets of dry, crumbly gooness that balanced out the fruity sweetness. Sure it was icier than the Salted Caramel. That is unavoidable unless a bunch of unatural things are thrown in. But I would by no means call it icy.

   After having Milkmade's ice cream, I will use it as a metric with which to compare all other ice creams to. It was super creamy. She nailed the texture, and that is crucile in this line of work.

   She is working on shipping her pints with dry ice, so if she ever stars shipping nationwide, I would highly recommend signing up. I know I will.

-Reese O'Shirey, Esq. 

Flavor of the Week: Parent Trap

Each week I will be posting a newly created flavor, or my own version of a traditional favorite. I create, make, and churn all my own ice creams, using nothing but milk, cream, sugar, eggs, and add-ins (i.e. peanut butter).

In producing a flavor, I try to conjure up an original name, a name that will be unique to the flavor, a name that creates a backbone with its meaning or nostalgic history for me.

This week I chose 'Parent Trap'. When I was a child, Disney produced a remake of the '61 classic "Parent Trap," casting Lindsay Lohan, who we have all come to love and admire, and her clone as the twin sisters to play the main role. My siblings and I watched this movie often, but one thing I gleamed from the campy movie changed my life forever. In a scene when the two Lohans are in isolation at camp, they begin eating Oreos. But not just Oreos, mind you; Oreos smeared with peanut butter. I had never thought of this before; it wrought a connection, a fusion of two worlds of tasty desserts of which I frequently indulged myself. It was a perfect combination.

Over a decade later, it struck me. I had to tape into that etherial combination of chocolate and peanut butter. And in doing so, I berthed one of the greatest ice creams to date. As you might be able to deduce, my 'Parent Trap' contains peanut butter and Oreos, but it is far more than that. In the thought process of such a creation, I mused over possibilities and flavor combinations. But it proved simple: the chocolate and peanut butter must be of equal value; one must not have residency or supremacy over the other. And this is where many of the art go awry: they allow one flavor to control too much of the overall flavor. I say "nay". Thus, I decided upon it: rich chocolate ice cream ribboned with smooth, creamy peanut butter, and layered with crunchy, chocolatey Oreo cookies.

I have never been one to praise chocolate ice creams. That is because all I have ever had are the the store bought brands that use cheap chocolate that has no depth or balance in their ice creams. In creating my chocolate base, I first create my own chocolate, molten and decadent, by combining cream with a blend of Dutch cocoa and mildly dark chocolate. This chocolate blend is then added to a personally pasteurized mixture of milk, sugar, and eggs. And viola! A balanced, blended chocolate base unlike any found in stores or local ice cream shops (Coldstone? My take on that shop in the near future) creates the canvas to which I can perfectly paint peanut butter pathways.

Peanut butter, for me, is a way of life. It is more than a food, or an item spread over bread. It is a daily, if not meal-y, consumption. Therefore, I go to great lengths to master its presence in ice cream. After I whip up a bowl of my sweetened peanut butter, I liberally layer it in the chocolate base, and it then becomes a frozen river of salt renting its way through a land of sweetened creation. And that's what it is all about. The coexistence, the rivalry, the harmony of salty and sweet. And as I alluded to earlier, I make them equals, so that neither has triumph, nor is shadowed. In my ice cream you will find in each bite the mirthful presence of sweetened chocolate yet simultaneously be pricked by its salted rival, peanut butter.    

Last of all is the special guest referee: Oreo cookie. Instead of chopping up Oreos wholly, I carefully remove the cream (because it is just puffed sugar and doesn't do well or taste good in ice cream), and only use the dark chocolate cookie sides. With these I create a crust, a layer, a gravel road that paves its way over the vast lands of chocolate, and bridges the breadth of the rivers of peanut butter. It adds that oh-so-desired "crunch", the likes of which can not be mimicked or faked. A crunch in ice cream adds another dimension, by detouring from the prevalent creaminess, that enhances the already enjoyable experience.

The first time I made a batch of this it proved to be the best to date, and promised to become a future classic. This was three months ago (March). In April, I walked into Target, and my legs, as if by their own volition, made a direct course for the freezer section. It is a habit I have. Whenever I go into a store or shop that carries frozen goods, I always check their ice cream selection even if I've been in there and checked it countless times (as in the case with this Target). But that day I found something new. Ben&Jerry's had just released four flavors as apart of their aid of Japan relief efforts and support of volunteerism. But one flavor struck me: "Peanut Butter World". I read the description: Milk Chocolate Ice Cream with Peanut Butter Swirls and Chocolate Cookie Swirls. Sound familiar? Yeah, I thought the same thing. Cursing my misfortune of Ben and Jerry hitting main stream with the flavor first, I purchased one. The name is something of a clever pun though. Here, the word 'Butter' is in place of the word 'Better', leading to the phrase "(peanut)Better World" achieved through volunteerism. Nevertheless, it was a good flavor, one of their better ones (I won't do a review of it in this present blog, but I might in the future), and an exact replica of the one I had churned out a month prior. Oh well, thus are the plagues of us smaller-batch makers. I must press on.

If you would like to see more pictures of the ice cream and flavors I create, then here have a look. It's just something I've put together for my experiments. The extra I put into pints for some friends.

Feel free to leave any questions or comments. Thanks for reading.