There’s a bit of a method behind the magic.
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A really good scoop of ice cream isn’t just delicious, it can also be healing. When I think about some of my favorite moments with family and friends over the years, there are a lot of them that actually involve some sort of dessert a la mode. Once when I was in middle school, my dad took my brother and I to the grocery store at 9 p.m. on a school night because we all had a craving for a pint of cookies and cream. On the last day at one of my jobs, my coworkers and I decided to get ice cream for lunch to celebrate the beginning of my next chapter.
The kinds of food we eat and how we share them with our loved ones is really special. And it turns out that the people behind Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams understand this feeling on a deep level.
I had the chance to chat with Beth Stallings, the Head of Innovation at Jeni’s. We chatted about how this emotional approach to ice cream helped create the two new Jeni’s Bridgerton ice cream flavors, aka, exactly the kind of sweet treat you’d want at your regency-era watch party!
The Jeni’s Approach to Building Flavors
Taste of Home: What is the most exciting thing about these new Jeni’s Bridgerton flavors?
Beth Stallings: For collaborations, one of our favorite things to do is get into character. We think really deeply about how we want to make people feel. Like, what’s the Venn diagram? Where is Bridgerton, and where is Jeni’s, and how do those overlap?
Shondaland and Netflix came to us because they knew that we could build worlds. The phrase we kept coming back to was “fantastical decadence.” That became our north star in terms of what we wanted to create.
TOH: What’s the most important aspect to get right when you’re creating ice cream for a show like this?
BS: As we’re trying flavors and working through concepts, we think to ourselves, OK, if I’m sitting on my couch and I’m eating a pint of this, do I feel as if it’s pulling me deeper into the show? Is it making it come alive from the taste and the textures and the smells? If I’m eating a pint of Queen Charlotte Sponge Cake, do I feel as if I could be sitting in court with Queen Charlotte?
TOH: When you’re developing a new ice cream flavor, where do you start?
BS: Ice cream has this way of pulling you into a moment…if you don’t pay attention to it, it will literally melt right in front of you. So, we start with how we want someone to feel. From there, we build in ingredients, textures and layers. We have a saying in the kitchen that we want to make a flavor so good it makes you cuss. It’s like, you had no control over your reaction because it was that good.
How Each of the Jeni’s Bridgerton Ice Cream Flavors Were Made
TOH: Can you walk me through how each of the flavors came together, and any challenges you faced?
BS: For Queen Charlotte Sponge Cake, we pulled inspiration from a Swedish Princess cake and from a Victoria sponge cake. The almond buttercream is a nod to the marzipan that you get on top of a Princess Cake. The honey sponge cake came about since bees are very important to the plot in Bridgerton. We’re always trying to plant little nuggets for fans of the show. The floral jam was something we could see Queen Charlotte smelling as she walked through her gardens. And then the color itself—well, purple is Queen Charlotte’s favorite color. I like to imagine the Queen herself giving the order to make this ice cream lavender.
For Earl Grey Crème Brulée, you know, tea can be a tough thing in ice cream. It can turn really bitter quickly. We found that it was actually better if we kept the bergamot and the tea separate. We do this quite often, where we’ll break an ingredient down to its components and build it from scratch. So, for this one we actually created our own Earl Grey using a blend of fermented black and green tea. Then we added bergamot oil, so we could control the amount. The end result is something tea forward, but without any bitterness, and a great floral punch.
When will Jeni’s Bridgerton ice creams be available?
Just like this season of Bridgerton, Jeni’s is dropping these flavors in two parts. You can visit the Jeni’s website right now to order Queen Charlotte Sponge Cake. The Earl Grey Crème Brulée flavor will be available beginning February 9.
Related:
- Dearest Gentle Reader—These ‘Bridgerton’ Food Collabs Are the Talk of the Ton
- Haagen-Dazs Just Turned the Flavor of the Year into My New Obsession
- I Tried the Little Debbie Ice Cream Sandwiches and Felt Like a Kid Again
