African Diasporic Ice Cream @ Tranquility Farm
Underneath the gazebo talking about ice cream. All photos by Matthew John.
We rounded out this year’s The Soul of Food series in the sweetest way possible with a celebration of ice cream innovations and flavors with Ice Cream Flavors of the Diaspora at Tranquility Farm in Bed-Stuy.
We began the session with Ena K. McPherson sharing some of the farm’s history of her and local gardeners establishing and stewarding the space in 2011. You can learn more about that history here.
Following that we got into some of the contributions Black people made in ice cream’s early developments. We highlighted the brilliance of Edmond Albius, who figured out how to pollinate vanilla plants and made it possible to grow the flavor outside of its indigenous region in North + Central America. We also shared a bit about Augustus Jackson who many researchers credit for figuring out adding salt to process of freezing ice cream, but there are some researchers who don’t think he was the first to do this. We also discussed the African and Indigenous stewardship of plants like sugar, vanilla, sorghum, and bissap that we’d be enjoying the flavors of that afternoon.
After laying down some historical context of ice cream, we got into some demos of making a dairy—full custard based ice cream, a vegan coconut ice cream base, and a blackberry-hibiscus sorbet.
Since we were having the session in a green space, we went the traditional non-electric route with making the ice cream and used hand cranks to finish our ice cream flavors. So once our bases were completed, Maya went into the science of adding salt to ice and creating something of brine to lower the ice’s temperature enough to begin turning our ice cream bases semi-solid.
After that our amazing group of participants got to cranking the ice cream bases! We ended up with 4 flavors to try: A Blackberry Hibiscus Sorbet alongside Sorghum Molasses, Peach, and Coconut Vanilla ice creams.
Big thanks to Ena and the Tranquility Farm for hosting us for the afternoon (and being so generous with the fruits of the farm), and to everyone who came out and participated. Also thanks to Matthew John for photographing the session. See you at the next one!
Homemade Sorghum Ice Cream for the people!
