In no particular order, I believe three of the world’s hardest questions to answer are as follows:
- Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
- What do you want to eat?
- What’s your favorite ice cream flavor?
Numbers 1 and 2 will always elicit some sort of response in the vein of “I couldn’t have less of an idea.” But number 3? Oh, I have lots of ideas… and even more follow-up questions.
Am I buying a pint at the grocery store or just grabbing a scoop? Am I at a chain? If so, which one? What’s the weather like? What did I have for dinner? Should I be taking soft serve into account? Because in that case, we’ll need to start from the beginning…
While all of that might sound insane to the Casual Ice Cream Eater, any Serious Ice Cream Lover (like me) knows that these details matter. We as a society have evolved past the chocolate vs. vanilla debates of yesteryear and launched full-speed ahead into a reality where both Thanksgiving and Hanukkah dinner can be served for dessert… so no, not all Cookies and Creams were created equal.
When bug-infused bites start to make for best-sellers, you start to wonder if there’s anything that (for better or worse) can’t be ice cream-ified? The concept of DIY ice cream is nothing new of course, and at-home systems like the viral Ninja Creami have made it even more popular in the last few years. However rewarding, historically the process has always required a bit of time, if not some serious planning ahead—but perhaps no longer. Enter: Frolic – “the Keurig of ice cream” that’s hoping to “make every counter a custom creamery.”
With the press of a button and a spoonful of your chosen ingredients, the Frolic machine promises to deliver instant world-class ice cream in just 90 seconds. The machine, which retails at $299, works by popping in one of Frolic’s ice cream “pods,” which feature organic ingredients sourced locally from a farm in Illinois. The secret, they say, is in their ice crystals, which are “about 20x smaller” than those of traditional ice cream and are atomized by the machine’s stainless steel blade. The end result? A signature, “smoother-than-smooth” homemade ice cream, with less fat and sugar than most supermarket brands.
The concept of having a technology “previously reserved for Michelin star chefs” is particularly exciting for anyone who finds themselves signing petitions to make their favorite seasonal flavors available year-round or dreaming up flavors that major manufacturers just haven’t caught onto yet. What if you could bring those to life just as instantly as you crave them? I had to find out for myself.
I gathered as many ingredients as I felt inspired by, and a couple of pods, then let my imagination go to work. The pods retail at $6.99 each and provide a base of either chocolate or vanilla in classic, lite, super lite, and vegan. The machine itself was pleasantly user-friendly and quick to get up-and-running. I started by making just one classic chocolate and one classic vanilla just to see what we were working with before I started experimenting.
After soliciting my co-workers for their reviews (and trying a few spoonfuls myself) we came to the agreement that while the flavor was good enough, it probably wouldn’t be what we reached for over most store-bought chocolate or vanilla pints. But with this in mind, I was hopeful that the more scaled-back flavor would mean they’d be more adaptable to the new and improved flavors I wanted to turn them into.
Now it was time for me to get creative. I shopped our office pantry and walk-in fridge to get inspired and wound up with an amalgamation of ingredients that were at least enough to get me started, even if not entirely orthodox.
My recipes were as follows:
- Birthday Cake: Vanilla pod + liquified Funfetti icing + crushed Nilla wafers + sprinkles
- Very Berry: Vanilla Pod + crushed to powder freeze-dried strawberries + frozen raspberries + blueberry compote
- Cookie Butter: Vanilla pod + cookie butter + crushed graham cracker + dark chocolate shards
- S’mores: Chocolate pod + chopped marshmallow + dark chocolate shards + graham cracker pieces
- Chocolate Covered Raspberry: Chocolate pod + frozen raspberries + hot fudge
- Peanut Butter Cup: Chocolate pod + liquified peanut butter + dark chocolate shards + one peanut butter cup
I added the requisite amount of ingredients, let them blend together, and then left them to freeze until the end of the day when it was time to do an official taste test.
My equations were by no means perfect math. Yet, despite my varying degrees of success, I was largely content with my results. I, of course, had to call in some other tastebuds to give me their more impartial thoughts, but the winners (and losers) were pretty clear.
Across the board, we all agreed that the vanilla-based pods seemed to take to their recipes more seamlessly than the chocolate ones had. Cookie Butter and Birthday Cake stood out as clear favorites—ironically because of their distinct approaches to their stickier ingredients. Adding the icing into the pod in a liquified state gave the whole pint of Birthday Cake the same sugary sweetness as a real slice. Whereas the cookie butter mixed-in straight out of the jar resulted in smaller spoonfuls that provided for bite-sized chunks of cookie butter, while the ice cream itself took on the essence of the crushed wafers. Both were hits in their own ways.
The S’mores and Peanut Butter Cup were both misses, but for totally opposite reasons. The S’mores didn’t totally capture the campfire essence you’d find in many store-brand S’mores flavors—the chopped marshmallow, of course, couldn’t quite compete with that of a gooey roasted one, and the graham cracker’s essence couldn’t be felt enough over the flavor of the chocolate. On the other end, the liquified peanut butter fought back almost a little too hard against the chocolate base, and the whole pint wound up feeling imbalanced.
The dueling berry flavors were a personal passion project for me. On one hand I love a good berry-based ice cream—but especially when it has both a berry-infused base and chunks of real fruit. However, the only thing I might love more is a chocolate-based berry flavor—but only when done well. Both of my berry flavors, Very Berry and Chocolate Covered Raspberry, predominantly featured frozen raspberries but were accented slightly differently. In the end, the vanilla-based Very Berry was the clear winner, with the vanilla taking on the aura of the crushed freeze-dried strawberries perfectly, while the chocolate and berries failed to co-exist harmoniously.
When it came to texture in terms of creamy vs. iciness, I found the pints to be more reminiscent of a Wendy’s Frosty—which, as a Frosty lover, wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. However, that did mean that I wouldn’t be counting on any of them to replace my go-to freezer staples on a regular basis. A pint of my personally mixed Cookie Butter would more likely slot into my freezer next to the one I bought at Trader Joe’s rather than instead of it.
Amidst the highs and lows, I found that the time I spent in the lab creating my flavors was almost as rewarding as it was to eat the ice cream itself. At nearly $300 for the machine + $7 per pod, this would admittedly be an expensive at-home experiment for the Casual Ice Cream Eater who would just as happily devour a $5 pint of Ben & Jerry’s. But for the Serious Ice Cream Lover, the Frolic is more about the love of the game—one where the prospect of limitless flavor journeys might wind up being as soul-nourishing as the ice cream they finish with… or at least a close second.
Have you tried making your own ice cream at home? Got a tried-and-true method—or a secret ingredient—you swear by?
