If you’re a fan of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream, flavors of chocolate and vanilla seem woefully banal. The family owned, gourmet ice cream maker based in Columbus, Ohio, incorporates tastes of wildberry lavender, Thai chili and salty caramel into its frozen vision. It all starts with organic Ohio dairy and a burst of fresh seasonal ingredients, with a delightfully sweet – and sometimes savory – finish.
“I worked at a French pastry shop for many years – through high school, college and beyond,” says Splendid Ice Cream owner Jeni Britton Bauer. “Surrounded by all those beautiful ingredients and such experienced pastry chefs, I knew I would learn a lot.” With refined technique, understanding of the business side and an appreciation of French chocolate, Bauer struck out on her own with a twist on the conventional food business model. “I don’t do focus groups or read industry forecasts,” she says. “I make ice cream for me and my friends.”
Her friends are lucky. “Making ice cream is all about layering flavors,” says Bauer. “Cream is a perfect carrier of flavor – storing butter next to onions will attest to that!” In her unique process, Bauer starts with fresh milk and cream from pasture-raised cows, adds sugar and other ingredients to the raw milk and pasteurizes it the old fashioned way. “This gives our ice cream a cooked custard-like flavor because some of the milk and cream is caramelized a bit,” she says. “We retain all of the flavor of the milk and cream by only pasteurizing once.” The ice cream is then homogenized to give it body. All of this work is done right on the farm, explains Bauer, who works with Snowville Dairy.
“From there we make pralines, butter brittle, roasted pumpkins and add them to the cream,” says Bauer. Moments after it is frozen in Italian gelato machines, it is hand-packed and shipped as soon as it hardens. “Hardening, also known as aging the ice cream, allows for the flavors to bloom,” says Bauer.
Every flavor in Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams has a story. “There is always someone or something that crosses my path and makes me think of a flavor,” says Bauer. “I like having a relationship with the ingredients that we use. Even our vanilla bean comes from a small fair-trade farm in Uganda, and we order directly from the woman who runs it. I have never encountered such fresh vanilla beans!”
Jeni’s fabulous holiday collection has a story, too. The holiday collection of ice creams was inspired by Bauer’s Norwegian friend, whose tales of childhood eats inspired her and Bauer to spend months collecting old cookbooks and testing recipes. Born of this “trip” to Norway were flavors like brown butter almond brittle, blackstrap praline (Bauer says is possibly the best flavor she’s ever made) and white chocolate evergreen with red currant “garland,” which Bauer describes as being: “…truly the flavor of Christmas. It tastes like Burl Ives should be standing next to it singing ‘Silver and Gold.’”
All of Jeni’s exciting holiday flavors are available in her five Columbus locations and through jenisicecreams.com, and can be shipped anywhere in the continental US. Or, if you’d like to celebrate the holidays locally with Jeni’s Splendid Treats, here is a list of shops and restaurants that are serving it near you:
Northern Ohio
- Bar Cento (Cleveland)
- Greenhouse Tavern (Cleveland)
- Miles Market (Solon)
Central Ohio
- Alana’s (Columbus)
- Barrio Tapas and Lounge (Columbus)
- Burgundy Room (Columbus)
- Café Apropos (Columbus)
- Cup ‘O Joe (5 locations in Columbus)
- Del Mar Restaurant (Granville)
- Dirty Franks Hot Dog Palace (Columbus)
- Dorothy Lane Market (3 locations in Dayton)
- The Hills Market (Worthington)
- Huffman’s Market (Upper Arlington)
- Hyatt on Capital Square (Columbus)
- Inn at Cedar Falls (Logan)
- Inn at Honey Run (Millersburg)
- Latitude 41 (Columbus)
- Liberty Tavern (Powell)
- Rigsby’s (Columbus)
- The Rossi (Columbus)
- The Seasons Bistro (Springfield)
- The Winds Café (Yellow Springs)
- Weiland’s Gourmet Market (Clintonville
- Z Cucina (Columbus)
Southern Ohio
- Buckley House Restaurant (Marietta)
- Green Dog Café (Cincinnati)
- Melt (Cincinnati)
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