EXOTIC ICE CREAM
No plain vanilla here: These S. Florida spots serve up a new twist.
July is National Ice Cream Month, and in South Florida, that means a summer of adventurous frozen treats. No, not rum raisin with extra sprinkles. We’re talking craft-beer floats and alcoholic chocolate Cabernet ice cream.
For a few dollars and the extent of a shopper’s curiosity, sweet-toothed visitors can indulge in exotic frozen flavors inspired by international cuisines. Instead of whipped cream, chocolate chips, cherries, nuts and Rocky Road, ice cream purveyors in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties are serving Hong Kong egg waffles, flan, guava and cannolis.
From the Little Havana flavors of Azucar to the New Jersey-style Boardwalk Italian Ice and Creamery in Boynton Beach, here are eight sweets to help you cool down for the summer.
Doughnut ice cream sandwich
Press Gourmet Sandwiches, 6206 N. Federal Highway, Fort Lauderdale; 954-440-0422 or Press-Gourmet Sandwiches.com
Owner Rand Carswell describes his lone, overthe-top dessert inside Press Gourmet Sandwiches as a churro doughnut with vanilla ice cream. And it somehow feels right at home amid Carswell and Chris Del-Prete’s Fort Lauderdale shop, where a panini press grills newspaper-themed sandwiches (the Post, the Sentinel, the Gazette), and serves them on wax paper that resembles newsprint. Using yeasty glazed doughnuts from Oakland Park’s Jupiter Donuts, Carswell slices the ring in half lengthwise, crisps each side in the sandwich press and tosses the halves into a bath of cinnamon sugar. He then smashes a scoop of vanilla ice cream (“until it’s like a burger patty,” Carswell says) into the sandwich and drizzles it with dulce de leche.
Egg waffle ice cream
Fyr and Ice, 10371 W. Sample Road, Coral Springs; 954-688-9078 or Fyr-Ice-Asian-Fusion Drinks.com
Icy, colorful and Instagram-ready, frozen Asianinspired treats put the American scoop to shame here at Fyr and Ice, a fusion spot whose menu showcases hot and cold, Chinatown-style staples. Worth ordering is the achingly sweet Hong Kong egg waffle, a deep-fried Belgian waffle-meets-bubble-wrap treat. The egg waffle can be served in a cone, folded falafel-style and stuffed with ice cream and sprinkles, or plated a la mode, with a generous scoop of matcha green-tea ice cream (alternatives: taro and red bean) dusted in powdered sugar and speared with Pocky biscuit sticks.
San Gennaro Feast
Vic and Angelo’s, 290 E. Atlantic Ave., Delray Beach, 561-278-9570; 4520 PGA Blvd., Palm Beach Gardens, 844-842-2632; VicandAngelos.com
Is this an Italian restaurant or the county fair? The centerpiece of this massively sinful dessert, named after Little Italy’s Feast of San Gennaro street festival in New York, is a tuft of pink cotton candy the size of a ripe watermelon. Flanking that is gelato, biscotti, a deep-fried-to-order basket of zeppoles, gummy bears and marshmallows and chocolate and caramel sauce.
Breakfast cereal ice cream
Serendipity Yogurt Café, 9457 Harding Ave., Surfside; 305-865-1506 or SerendipityCreamery.com
Owner Jessica Levison’s nostalgic ice cream calls to mind the delicious bottom of a cereal bowl, when the half-soggy, sugarcoated golden flakes have turned the milk into syrup. It’s not unlike how Levison makes the breakfast-cereal ice cream inside her 10-year-old Surfside creamery, a family-owned outfit (“my grumpy dad works the counter,” Levison quips) decorated in cottoncandy blue and pink. She soaks corn flakes in an ice cream base overnight and then, the following morning, blends the soggy cereal together with a dash of brown sugar. “The brown sugar gives it that Frosted Flakes flavor,” Levison says. Serendipity also offers their Peekaboo line of vegetable ice creams, served in prepackaged pints, including vanilla with zucchini, chocolate and cauliflower and strawberry and carrot. “It’s like Häagen-Daaz and the produce aisle had a baby,” Levison says. “You can’t really taste the veggies, but you get all of the benefit of the vitamins and minerals.”
Cuban flavors
Azucar Ice Cream Company, 1503 SW Eighth St., Miami; 305-381-0369 or AzucarIceCream.com
The Little Havana ice cream shop on Calle Ocho is bursting with Latin flavors such as guava and mamey fruit, cafe con leche and cuatros leches (four milk cake). But the most Miami of them all, if you ask manager Clara Sanchez, is the Abuela Maria, a fusion guava chunks sourced from the Redlands, vanilla ice cream, cream cheese and, of course, those international superstars: Maria cookies. Also on the menu is Man- tecado, a custardy treat using Cuban vanilla and a pinch of cinnamon and nutmeg; and the Mulatica, Azucar’s cinnamon-oatmeal cookie.
Craft-beer floats
Mr. Kream, 2322 N. Miami Ave., Miami; 786-659-4541 or MrKreamWynwood.com
The hip-hop-themed ice cream parlor in Wynwood boasts rappers on the walls (a portrait gallery featuring Jay-Z, Missy Elliot, Tupac Shakur) and in the ice cream. There’s A$AP Rocky Road and Fat Joe Pistachio, LL Cool Crunch and Kahludacris, each tagged with edible spray paint. But we’re partial to craft-beer floats inside the neon-lit shop, which was opened last summer 2017 by three DJs who go by the monikers Jim, SOS, and Affect.
Adult ice cream and adult Italian ice
The Boardwalk Italian Ice and Creamery, 209 N. Federal Highway, Boynton Beach; 561-600-9593 or TheBoardwalkIce.com
This family operation in Boynton Beach is inspired by the Jersey Shore boardwalk, and features the carnivalesque comfort foods one might may find there: funnel cakes, zeppoles, caramel candied apples and deep-fried Oreos. But it’s his Beach Bowls (a sundae with heaping scoops of ice cream) and alcoholic treats that Joe Hurtuk, Jr. says “turn people crazy” in a good way. There’s the boozy rum raisin, cream de menthe and the chocolate Cabernet (with red wine, of course), along with a Fireball whiskey-flavored Fireball Italian ice. “You can’t even taste-test it unless we card you first,” Hurtuk, Jr., says with a laugh. “It’s very ice cream-forward and not too alcoholic. You won’t need to walk out of here blowing on a Breathalyzer.”
The Punch Bowl
Jaxson’s Ice Cream Parlor, 128 S. Federal Highway, Dania Beach; 954-923-4445 or Jaxsons IceCream.com Bigger, more decadent and a lesser-known cousin to Jaxson’s famous Kitchen Sink, the Punch Bowl looks designed for people who don’t want to watch each other eat ice cream. The Punch Bowl ($119.99 on Jaxson’s website) serves 12 people, piling 12 scoops of ice cream, a mountain of whipped cream and dollops of chocolate syrup, nuts, cherries and bananas into an oversize mixing bowl. The whole mess is topped with sparklers and American flags, since there’s nothing more patriotic than a bellyful of ice cream.