There are ten women clustered around my desk, spoons poised. The moment four quarts of Louisville Cream ice cream are produced, everyone’s mouth is open: “Ooohs!” and “Ahhs!” swiftly turn to ice-cream muffled moans of ecstasy. When a spoonful of The Red Queen is eaten, there is a moment of luxuriating, a second of pure plush silence. You know it’s good ice cream when it strikes you dumb.
Darryl Goodner, 27, and Zach Hardin, 26, have been friends since attending Waggener Traditional High School together, and they’ve been making ice cream together for almost as long as that. Why? “We just…we like ice cream. We drink beer and eat ice cream.” Goodner laughs. “I’d been making ice cream for a long time and we just started to prefer the ice cream we were making to the ice cream we were buying.”
And small wonder: Louisville Cream’s flavors are works of culinary art. The Red Queen is a goat cheese and honey ice cream with cherry five-spice jam and toasted pistachios. The bourbon pecan with corn flake praline ice cream is made with Woodford Reserve bourbon, swirled with a salted maple caramel and filled with chunks of pecans and pralined corn flakes.
Goodner and Hardin still work their day jobs, Goodner at the Michelin tire plant, Hardin as the manager of the Schnitzelberg Heine Brothers. They, along with Creative Director (and librarian) Lynette Ruby, have been running Louisville Cream as a business for “around 8 months now,” says Hardin. “We’ve been killing ourselves getting this going, but it’s been so much fun. A lot of people come to us. It’s really neat.”
Coming up with the exact blend of ingredients and method that makes Louisville Cream so special “took a lot of research. A lot of trial and error,” explains Goodner. “There’s only so much bourbon you can put in ice cream. One of the very first flavors [I tried to make] was peach wine ice cream, which we could do now, no problem, but back then it was an icy disaster. It tasted fine, it just wasn’t quite ice cream.” Currently, Louisville Cream is made with a 14% butterfat Prairie Farms ice cream base, to which more butterfat is added because “that’s what makes it so smooth and creamy!”
Goodner and Hardin have created flavors like Hi-Five Glazed Doughnut, with chunks of doughnut and a glaze swirl; and deep-fried cookies and cream, made with chocolate-covered, deep fried Oreos blended into vanilla ice cream. A collaboration with Lexington’s (and soon Louisville’s) Beer Engine produced barley wine and brie ice cream with a pretzel brittle and raspberry swirl. Are you salivating yet?
So why the name? Goodner explains, ““It was the first name we had. Obviously our flavors are artisan, but it’s genuinely hand crafted and we wanted something that sounded classic. Louisville Cream, like the phrase Cellar Door, it just sounds pleasant to me.” Brian Patrick Todd designed their logo, and the packaging is a “work in progress.”
So where can you get Louisville Cream? Right now? You’d have to throw a party and have Louisville Cream cater, or attend an event where they’ll be set up (like the Kentucky Science Center's MegaBITE or Fat Tuesday at the Tim Faulkner Art Gallery). Louisville Cream will also customize a flavor for your wedding and handle ice cream distribution. But have no fear: Louisville Cream is hoping to schedule one or more ice cream socials between now and the summertime opening of the ice cream truck. “It’s going to operate mostly like a food truck, but we also have traditional ice cream truck licensing. Meaning that if we’re just driving up Bardstown Road, we can just stop and sell someone ice cream,” Goodner says.
Goodner has big dreams—from handmade pretzel waffle cones, to fancy-tiered wedding cakes, to homemade ice cream novelties for the truck. Louisville Cream may be available at some point for a six-month or twelve-month ice cream club, where the product could be delivered to your door, monthly. They’re still trying to work the logistics of that one out.
“We honestly think it’s the best ice cream in the state,” Goodner says. “We make everything, all the jams, cookies, candies, caramel. And if we don’t make it we try to get it sourced locally by people we think are cool. We want everybody to eat Louisville Cream.”
You can find Louisville Cream on their website, on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Images courtesy of Louisville Cream and Elizabeth Myers
