Pizza ice cream might have started as an April Fool’s gag, but it became the flavor of the week at A to Z Creamery, a luxury ice cream producer whose customers eagerly pre-order weekly ice cream drops and pick up pints from the creamery’s commercial kitchen in Hopkins, Minnesota. “We thought it would be pretty funny if we advertised that we’re gonna make pizza and then we made real pizza ice cream – kind of a flip-flop of what April Fool’s really is,” A to Z owner Zach Vraa tells Pizza Today. “It ended up being a mozzarella ice cream with a sweetened San Marzano tomato swirl and a basil pizza crust. It’s definitely a flavor experience; we wanted to do something fun and unique like we do every year. … We got a lot of good feedback on it.”
Vraa explains that A to Z offers at least one new flavor every week – Peanut Butter & Jelly Forever, for example, features strawberry ice cream with peanut butter swirl and caramelized potato chips – with almost no repeats. To accomplish this feat, Vraa and staff are constantly experimenting with new ingredients and flavor combinations. The creamery’s pantry is packed with a variety of chocolates, caramels and cookies that serve as jumping-off points to satiate A to Z’s devoted clientele, who nearly always purchase every carton offered at an impressive $14 per pint.
Pizza ice cream isn’t the A to Z’s first foray into the unusual: During April Fool’s week 2024, the creamery offered sushi ice cream. “We left out the fish,” Vraa says, “but we did all the other things that encompass sushi.” Indeed, I’m Soy Happy features soy sauce ice cream with a ginger cream cheese swirl and wasabi cookie crunch.
In addition to Basically Pizza – the mozzarella ice cream – A to Z’s drop for the first week of April included Almost Pizza, an ice cream that looked like pizza with its cream cheese frosting ice cream base, sugar cookie “crust” and strawberry swirl “sauce.” Over time, Vraa says he’s created many cheese-based ice creams, including cream cheese, goat cheese, mascarpone and ricotta-based sweet treats. A mozzarella ice cream, he warns, might not build the confidence of a novice gelatier. “We’ve been doing ice cream now for five years, and we still had a tough time with it,” he says.
“People that work in a pizzeria know better than anyone how flavor works and how pizza flavor works, but trying to get the right texture of ice cream would be difficult,” Vraa says. “Any soft cheese usually works best because it’ll incorporate with the milk and cream better. If you take a super hard block of cheddar and you’re trying to mix it with milk, that’s not going to emulsify very well.”
Texture troubles aside, Vraa says nailing the tomato swirl was the toughest part of his April Fool’s Day experiment. He blended the San Marzano tomatoes and cooked them down before adding dextrose so the mixture wouldn’t freeze. He then experimented with different amounts of basil, butter, garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, salt and a touch of molasses before finding a mixture that was both and savory.
“We tried to lower the sugar and the sweetness level as much as possible while still making it a dessert … but it’s nothing like a pint of chocolate or vanilla,” Vraa says.
For the basil crust crunch, Vraa mixed flour, water and olive oil to create a very high-hydration dough before adding salt, basil and sugar, rolling the dough and creating tiny discs that are sprinkled throughout the final product. While Basically Pizza may not make a repeat appearance, Vraa says his most adventurous consumers loved it. “It was probably one of the most fun pints they’d ever had.”
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