Paul Trienekens/unsplash
With all its ruffles and twists and come-hither tip, soft serve has always had an aesthetic appeal despite its position in the realm of pre-fab fast food. Though it hasn’t changed much over the years – soft serve is more or less the same everywhere you go, typically made with a mass-produced base shipped in bags to be used in special machines – I’ve remained loyal well into adulthood, when my tastes should have evolved to more refined single scoops of small-batch salted caramel or chocolate mint.
Soft serve came to be in the back of an ice cream truck in a New York suburb in 1934, and has since become a cheap staple of summer, eaten in flip flops while hanging out at the drive-in or on the midway. Its uniform and brilliant white smoothness only adds to its familiarity, boosting its appeal; until fairly recently it has been rare to find soft serve made from a custom-blended base, but craft ice creameries and chefs are realizing that they are not limited to the standard chocolate and vanilla that comes off a truck and are coming up with their own concoctions to churn in soft ice cream machines that incorporate air as the mixture freezes before being extruded into cone or cup. By making what’s old new again and adding their own twist, restaurateurs know social media will spread the word, free of charge, better than any advertising campaign.
Gorilla Whale’s soft serve twist of cherry and toasted rye ice creams.Julie Van Rosendaal
“I swear three-quarters of my Instagram feed is soft serve,” says Jessica Lypkie, pastry chef at Gorilla Whale, a vintage-rock-themed cocktail and ramen bar that recently opened in Calgary’s trendy Inglewood neighbourhood. “Instagram has everything to do with the trendiness of it.”
“Who doesn’t love soft serve? It’s fun and it hits you in that nostalgic spot,” Gorilla Whale co-owner Brendan Bankowski says. “Regular vanilla is great, but then you put a machine in the hands of someone who knows what they’re doing, who can make their own bases from scratch … ” he gestures toward Lypkie, who has been churning out batches in three flavours: cherry, honey and rye (the grain, not the booze). The base for soft serve is slightly different than for hard ice cream, she says – made with milk, no eggs and barely any cream, it must be strained and perfectly smooth to go into the machine. “Even my dad loves it,” she adds. “When he came for dinner last week, he started and finished with soft serve.”
The Honeycomb Peak features Soft Peaks soft serve, topped with a piece of local honeycomb.HANDOUT
Bankowski points out that, on a practical level, having soft serve on the menu simplifies things in the kitchen. “You can pound out a lot of desserts in a busy restaurant with just a machine,” he says. “And then have some fun with the toppings.” They even use soft serve in a boozy cocktail float at the bar.
Other restaurants are similarly inspired: At downtown Calgary’s Bar Von der Fels, a hip, tiny wine bar that has earned spots on several best-restaurant lists since its opening in late 2016, soft serve is a new medium for interesting flavours; this spring, their minimal menu included the option of rhubarb soft serve topped with spruce tips. Down the street, the hip Two Penny has just had a machine installed. Nearby, pastry chef Yann Blanchard recently expanded his yellow-housed patisserie to take over the house next door, painting it purple and turning it into a fun yet upscale soft serve takeaway called Berlingo.
“The main appeal of soft serve is that ice cream is much more enjoyable at around minus 8 C than minus 18 C,” says Blanchard, the only Canadian pastry chef to earn membership in the French pastry association Relais Desserts. “The taste you get from the ice cream being churned à la minute [made to order] is something I was drawn to.” With multiple machines allowing for frequent menu updates, his flavours include classics and seasonals: hazelnut, vanilla bean, cherry-raspberry and mango-passionfruit, with the option of pastry embellishments like pieces of kouign amann or Paris-Brest.
Soft Peaks's Gastown tops twisted soft serve with homemade tiramisu ingredients.HANDOUT
Retailers such as Soft Peaks, one of the first ice creameries in Vancouver to focus solely on soft serve (and the only to make its own bases using organic ingredients) use the twisted peaks as a vehicle for all kinds of sweet, crunchy things.
“It’s everyone’s favourite childhood dessert,” says co-owner Amy Kim, whose husband, Dan Kim, and brother-in-law, Ken Kim, founded the shop. They make the creamy base themselves, ensuring it’s not too sweet in order for the flavour of the organic milk from nearby Avalon dairy to come through, and they also do a dark chocolate version. Both are used as blank canvases that allow customers to get creative with dips, syrups and toppings such as locally made honeycomb, yuzu marmalade, cornflakes or Himalayan pink salt. (That such concoctions just happen to be photogenic only boosts their popularity.)
The only challenge, then, is finding a suitably Instagrammable backdrop before your ice cream starts to melt. (Some retailers have thought of that too, customizing a wall area where the natural light falls just right, to encourage social sharing.) Although the sultry drips that are even quicker to roll down your cone and your hand are all part of the allure.