After five years of recipe development, Jeni Britton Bauer, founder of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams, is unveiling the company’s newest flavor: dairy-free, vegan Dark Chocolate Truffle. Launching their first plant-based ice cream is what Jeni playfully dubbed her moonshot since the idea took root. Her goal was to create an entirely new type of ice cream while upholding the same quality in texture, body and flavor as her celebrated ice creams made from grass-pastured milk.
“We didn’t try to make something that would pass for a dairy version of ice cream,” says founder and chief creative officer Jeni Britton Bauer. “Instead, we looked to make something new and different and wondrous all on its own. The resulting Dark Chocolate Truffle is so deeply, primally satisfying that since the first time I had it, I think about it and crave it just as much as dairy ice cream. This flavor is for anyone who wants a truly beautiful, memorable frozen dessert.”
While most other dairy-free ice creams on the market contain vegetable and algae proteins, or an overuse of stabilizers, Dark Chocolate Truffle is no exception to Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams’ commitment to whole ingredients rather than synthetic flavorings. So the challenge at hand was: How can you replicate the scent-absorbing, meltability of butterfat in a completely vegan ice cream? After dozens of test batches and every possible combination of plant proteins and nut milks, Jeni settled on the magical relationship between high-quality coconut cream and Fair Trade cocoa.
Since fat carries all the flavor in ice cream, the wonderful fat content in coconut proved to be a superior base above all the others, because Jeni and her team found a way to push coconut to the point that it yielded the same bouncy body as butterfat. Coupled with the right stability and scoopability—a result of the cocoa absorbing water—Dark Chocolate Truffle became the ultra-creamy vegan ice cream Jeni set out to make.
Dark Chocolate Truffle hits all the hallmarks of the perfect dark chocolate ice cream: mouth-filling, rich and creamy. And it leaves the palate with a pleasant dryness and a soft, round and nutty coconut finish.
Beginning Friday, November 10, Dark Chocolate Truffle will be available at all 30 Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams across the country. Currently this flavor is not available for shipping or online.
