Cuscuna Jackie - Ample Hills Creamery: secrets and stories from Brooklyns favorite ice cream shop

CONTENTS

A SPOON IN THE ROAD

IN OCTOBER 2010 , just six days before my wife, Jackie, and I were scheduled to sign the lease for our first ice cream shop here in Brooklyn, I got a phone call from God. Well, it felt like God at the time.

It was a job offer from a major book publisher in New York. They wanted me to come in and oversee production of their audiobook line. You see, for eight years Id been making a living (on and off, that is, and recently mostly off) producing and directing audiobooks, as well as writing the occasional half-man, half-gator monster movie. The last two years had been tough. Freelance work had dried up.

The monsters werent paying the bills. I was living off our nest egg, slowly eating away at it, while dreaming, planning to open Ample Hills Creamery. I loved ice cream. I loved the idea of opening a neighborhood shop, like something out of Sesame Street. But the riskthe pressure to succeedwas tremendous. Jackie and I have two little kids. Shes a public school teacher. We were about to sink our life savings into an ice cream dream. I had zero experience running a business, no culinary background, and not one good reason to believe we could be successful. And here was a call from on high, offering me an escape hatch, if you will. A real job, with security, health insurance, and sick days! If ever there was a fork in the road, this was it.

I feared Jackie secretly hoped that Id take the job and save the family from my fantasies of an ice cream kingdom, but she didnt utter a word. To her credit, she said the decision was mine to make.

The problem was, I didnt feel like I had a choice. I told myself that Ample Hills could wait. I had two kids. I had to be responsible. I had to be able to provide for them. Before the phone call, the shop felt like my only chance at a job. I had an unwavering passion for Ample Hills, and ice cream, and I knew in my heart that I could make it work. But realistically, I was spending our nest egg to buy myself a job. Now that I had a choice, how in good conscience could I turn down the security of a real job? If I were single, with no kids, OK. But I wasnt. I decided to take the job.

Then Jackie spoke up. Id been counting on her to be thrilled with my decision. Or at least relieved. But she wasnt. If we open the shop, maybe well struggle, maybe well just squeak by, maybe the kids wont have as much stuff, she said, but theyll have a happy dad. She added, I cant live with you if youre miserable, always asking, What if, what if? Maybe taking the jobs the responsible decision, but its also the easier one, and is that what we want to teach the kids? That was it, really. Ice cream makes people happy. Ice cream makes me happy.

In the years before we opened Ample Hills, I made ice cream for friends and family in the Adirondacks, on the porch of a log cabin overlooking a small wooded lake. Jackie and her family have summered there since she was a little girl. For the same three weeks, for over thirty years, the same families have rented the same cabins, and the childrenand now their childrenhave grown up together. I am a late addition to the genealogy. I married into the Adirondack tribe, but I arrived with my old-fashioned hand-crank ice cream maker in tow, and they welcomed me. Wed gather on the porch, taking turns cranking, as we prepared gallons and gallons of ice cream for large ice cream socials. It was there that I developed most of the recipes in this book, dreaming up ideas, adjusting them here and there, collaborating with others, always asking for feedback. On that porch, with the encouragement and love of those friends and families, Ample Hills was born.

I always set out to make the best ice cream Id ever had. Why aspire to make the second best, right? But I realized that what was even more fun than eating the ice cream was the communal experience of friends and family taking turns cranking away at that wooden contraption, the shared joy of opening up the canister and seeing those billowy ribbons of fresh ice cream. Jackie and I wanted to make Ample Hills a gathering place. A place where people would want to come to pass the time, to share an ice cream cone with their kids or a banana split with their girlfriend or boyfriendor an ice cream cake at a birthday party.

Needless to say, I turned down that job offer.

Today you may find me climbing up from the basement, struggling to carry the twelfth bucket of base for the day. Or running back to the basement when the breaker trips and all the machines go silent. Or arguing with a vendor on the phone, furious that we didnt get a delivery of pistachios. Or yelling at the freezers, or sweet-talking them, or coaxing them through another heat wave. Or staggering home, my shirt splattered, tripping over my own feet at the end of a long day. But dont let any of that fool you. Theres a better sleep waiting. Im happier now. Our two little kids, Nonna Kai and Kaleo, never understood what it meant to have their daddy be a grumpy audiobook producer. But they sure know what it means to have him be a happy ice cream warrior.

Its been a few years since we opened Ample Hills. Ive churned tens of thousands of gallons of ice cream. Made hundreds of flavors. Met countless wonderful families in our shop here in Brooklyn. And now I have this opportunity to share some of these stories, some of these recipes with you. As well as a few tips on how to sell your killer half-shark, half-elephant movie to Hollywood (OK, maybe I cant help with that).

But believe it or not, creating a movie monster isnt so different from creating a great flavor of ice cream. Really. If youre interested in monsters, you watch every monster movie you can get your hands on (preferably while eating pints of ice cream). You research mythical creaturesthe Hydra, the Gryphon, the Cyclops. You write down sordid, terrifying details from your nightmares. You look up drawings of prehistoric beaststhe Megaladon, the Terror Bird, the Spinosaurus. You borrow the head of one, the tail of another You play around with it until it belongs to you and hopefully feels somewhat fresh and new.