Moulds make the man

Ice-pop maker keeps the city cool with experimental flavours, writes

“I CALL it the cut-and-paste apartment,” Walter Youngblood, an artist and ice-cream man, said of the fourth-floor walk-up in East Harlem, where he’s lived for 20 years.

He bartered a painting for the stove and rescued the bashed-in mini-chandelier from the trash. It hangs in the kitchen, which has colonised half the living room.

The refrigerator stands in a far corner, and steel wire shelves jut out, with dangling pots, pans and heavy-duty sieves at the ready.

But the tool that Youngblood, 49, treasures most is one he doesn’t use any more: A set of ice-pop moulds that he bought five years ago when he started his one-man ice-cream company, KingLeche Cremes.

Made of silicone, the moulds are covered by an aluminium lid with slits for wooden sticks. This became troublesome: The sticks must be aligned just so, or they’ll tilt and the ice-cream bars cannot be cleanly extracted. Now he uses stainless-steel moulds.

Still, for Youngblood’s first wobbly summers in business, his fortunes depended on these silicone moulds.

Into them he poured an unconventional custard of goat’s milk, having discovered in his 20s that he was lactose intolerant.

That was a shock after growing up as part of a sprawling family in Kansas City, Missouri, in which, he said, “every household seemed to have a hand-cranked ice-cream maker with rock salt and ice.”

MILK MADE

“Goat’s milk is the most similar to human’s,” he said.

Since it is lower in fat than cow’s milk, he stirs in duck eggs for richness. He refuses to add stabilisers, believing they ruin the texture. This has led to occasional disasters, as when half a day’s stock melted.

Youngblood did not foresee a career in dairy. Once a business major, he switched to journalism, got involved in the antiapartheid movement, followed the Grateful Dead, tried film school and wound up with a walk-on part in the movie

Not until he began waiting tables at WD-50 on the Lower East Side did he become serious about cooking. He marvelled over the savoury ice-cream flavours (“Cornbread!”) and asked Wylie Dufresne, the chef, if he could trail in the kitchen.

He foraged for ingredients for his own concoctions: wild honeysuckle from the streets of Red Hook, Brooklyn; honey from his neighbour’s backyard hives.

Last summer was a difficult season. “The bees didn’t survive the winter,” Youngblood said. His father died last July. But the small sum he bequeathed to The moulds are Youngblood’s most treasured kitchen tool, even though he doesn’t use them any more — he now uses stainless steel ones for his business.

his son will help Youngblood expand his reach beyond a few outdoor markets and restaurants.

He named the company after his dog, King, and his white cat, Leche, who are at war. He likes bringing unlikely pairs together.

When he sells the bars, which he makes in a friend’s commissary kitchen in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, parents of little children look askance at flavours like Blushing Grasshopper, a blend of spinach and strawberry. Sometimes, he offers the first bar free.

He fondly remembers a blue-cheese ice cream that he attempted for friends one Thanksgiving.

“It was bad,” he said. “But I’m still committed to trying it.”