Ice cream lovers in search of a new taste scoop meet Calcutta-based Anuvrat Pabrai who’s giving the humble ice cream a gourmet makeover. For decades, Pabrai’s Tulika’s ice cream chain was a big favourite with deliciously different flavours. But when the company hit financial trouble and had to shut shop, he didn’t stop experimenting. He started making artisanal varieties — featuring humble natural fruity flavours to exotic herbs and even nalen gur.

Today, Pabrai, joined by sons Kunal and Nishant, is dishing out delectable and unusual tastes like black sesame, lemongrass, mascarpone cheese with candied fruits, and even sandalwood ice cream! Says Anuvrat, who keeps a close watch on the quality of Pabrai’s Fresh & Naturelle ice cream: “We’ve got an elaborate process of testing and tasting and over the years we’ve refined our products and got some great new tastes.” The family’s ice creams are available in half-litre tubs priced between Rs 200 and Rs 425 and also in scoops at Rs 39 to Rs 89.

Mumbai-based ice cream maker Bina Doshi, too, serves up natural flavours in ice creams made in her home kitchen. She honed her ice cream making skills by supplying friends and then went pro in 2008. But it was only a couple of years ago, when someone asked her to create a dessert for a Thai meal that she really started to experiment.

“When the lemongrass flavour impressed my guests, I felt confident trying out a new flavour every few months,” she says. She’d been doing regular flavours like kesar pista and paan chocolate chip for years. But then she began innovating with popcorn, Oreo cookies, biscuits and even ginger wasabi. 
 

Says Doshi, “My milk-based ice cream is lighter and less sweet with no extra cream. I’m finicky about  ingredients and everything’s approved by me and my team makes it.” Doshi has a central kitchen at Hughes Road in Mumbai where the ice creams are made but the prep work is done in her home kitchen. All flavours are priced from Rs 450 to Rs 600 for one-litre tubs.

The Pabrais and Doshi belong to an exclusive band of artisanal ice cream makers who disdain mass-produced flavours and believe in making everything from scratch. They’re small producers, churning out batches of 60-to-100 litres and sometimes a little more ice cream daily and that’s what makes them niche. The ice creams are made fresh, using top-notch fruit and other ingredients such as vanilla beans from south India and organic fruits and also Belgium chocolate. Needless to say, the products contain no preservatives or additives.

There’s also Chennai-based Amadora Gourmet Ice Cream, owned by engineer-turned-gourmet ice cream man Deepak Suresh. After doing a month-long ice cream making course in the US, he set up his business in 2012. “In India, we don’t have quality ice cream mixes,” he laments. “In the US, you just call a dairy farm and tell them what percentage fat mix you want and they deliver.”

At Amadora, the mixes — milk, cream, sugar and milk powder — are made from scratch. The milk is re-pasteurised at 70° Celsius to remove bacteria and the mix is left to age overnight to give it a creamy flavour. He adds: “We make one big ice cream mix of 120 litres four-to-five times a week. This mix is then infused with various flavours.”

Amadora, which makes 60-80 litres of ice creams in a day, boasts an amazing 250 flavours, priced at Rs 220 for a 140g scoop. The cool favourites include Maami’s Filter Kaapi, five bean vanilla ice cream, salted butter caramel and garlic ice cream. Other must-haves are chocobars  dipped in Callebaut Belgian chocolate that are priced at Rs 150 each. Incidentally, the Ambani family is said to send people to pick up chocobars from Amadora.

There’s also Mumbai-based artisan ice cream brand Sucres Des Teres run by husband-wife restaurateurs Yohaan Dattoobhai and Kunali Chandaria-Dattoo-bhai. While Yohaan has his famous restaurant called Kaboom, Kunali is a trained Cordon Bleu chef. Their ice creams are all prettily packed in appealing jars tied with brown ribbons.

Their  journey began when Kunali created a ginger biscuit and Thai basil ice cream sandwich for a select supper menu a few years back and it became an instant hit. Their menu is short and sweet, consisting of 10 flavours — priced from Rs 650 to Rs 750 for half a litre — and include seasonal varieties like Alphonso mangoes, litchis and strawberries, salted caramel, mint chocolate chip, dark chocolate and candied ginger and Espresso coffee.

The jars come with a two-week shelf life. Says Kunali, “The ice cream is hand-churned in small batches. We typically produce four-to-five batches a day depending on orders.” Their ice creams are available for pick-up from their centralised kitchen.
How about sampling an ice cream made right in front of you? In Gurgaon, at the Cherry Comet ice cream store, engineers-turned-artisanal ice cream makers Rohan Bajla, Saransh Goyal and Anirudh Singh do just that. It’s the plumes of white vapour emerging from the mixer that grabs customers. “It’s popular in the West. Instant ice cream is made with the help of liquid nitrogen in front of the customer,” explains Bajla.

“Fresh ingredients are infused into the ice cream mix and then frozen with the help of liquid nitrogen. The liquid nitrogen brings down the temperature to -200° Celsius, which then freezes the ice cream,” he adds. Absolute must-haves include Banarasi Punch — made with betel leaves, gulkand and garnished with supari, coffee-toffee (sticky toffee sauce over ice cream) and Belgian Bolero. The ice creams are available in 100g and 150g quantities priced between Rs 100 and Rs 220 a scoop.

Can ice creams be healthy? Preah Narang, who owns Delhi-based Minus 30 (the name derives from the temperature at which most ice creams freeze), replies with an emphatic “Yes”. Her ice creams are aimed at fitness freaks. Preah works on the ice cream flavours while daughter Shivanie Mirchandani is the in-house ice cream chef, and another daughter, Gayatri, takes care of marketing.
 

Their online store, launched just this April, has a health range with names like Fitbit Chocolate, Lemon Lunges, Mango Muscles, Banana Boost, Crosstrain Coffee and Vanilla Viper. Says Gayatri: “Bespoke is our mantra and we can customise flavours for clients. Our ice creams are lighter because we use low-fat slim milk minus added cream. We make it in small batches and end up making 50-to-60 litres a week.” The family’s looking at doubling the quantity it makes in the coming months.

Another recent flavourful addition in the national capital area is Scoops N Sticks set up by the husband-and-wife duo Shoaib Mohammad and Fatima Naqvi. It makes fruit-based  popsicles and milk-based ice creams. They learnt their craft under a London-based ice cream maker. “In India, existing ice cream flavours are very old-school and done to death. Most of them fail quality standards,” says Shoaib. The pair makes ice creams in their centralised kitchen in Delhi’s Vasant Kunj. While the popsicles are priced at Rs 80, half-a-litre tubs cost Rs 350.

While popsicles aren’t strictly speaking ice cream, they’re big hits with ice cream lovers, say Sudheer Grover and Pallavi Kuchroo, who started the Mumbai-based Frugurpop two years back. The team tested the market by setting up a kiosk in Mumbai’s Bandra area and inside a mall. Inspired by Latin American-style paletas, an ice-pop with fresh fruits, Frugurpop has 10 fruit flavours and some of their bestsellers include Triple Berry, Kiwi & Strawberry Lemonade and Fruitilicious — containing delec-table seasonal fruit slices inside.
 

While doing a US undergrad degree, Sudheer enrolled in a few courses that helped him master the art of making paletas. On his return, he set up a factory solely to produce these icy creations. Other flavours include Apple Cinnamon & Rosemary, Mango Cheesecake and Tiramisu. While Frugurpop  mainly caters to big weddings and corporate events, Frugurpop also sells its popsicles from a food truck in Gurgaon.

It’s important to ensure that these ice creams are frozen and stay that way when customers open them. To make sure customers get their ice cream frozen, the ice cream makers take extra care. Narangs of Minus 30, for instance, delivers in a special freezer pack combined with ice gel. Frugurpop’s popsicles are home delivered in special zip-lock pouches.

And to keep customers happy and coming back, these creators say it’s all about constantly innovating with flavours. Grover aims to launch a range of non-milk based popsicles using non-dairy products like soy and coconut milk. Kunali of Sucres Des Teres has given an imaginative twist to summer staples for high-end patisseries and restaurants, producing ice cream macaroons for Le 15 Patisserie and coffee rasgullas for Bombay Canteen. The Pabrais are doing cuisine specific ice cream pairings for fine dining restaurants, creating five-spice or date palm and jaggery ice creams.

Artisanal ice cream makers say there’s a voracious appetite for their products and are eyeing expansion in a big way. Calcutta’s Pabrai family have 25 franchisees in nine cities and have recently opened a standalone outlet on Sarat Bose Road and a smaller kiosk in City Centre Mall in Salt Lake. Coming up next are eight more stores across the city. Grover of Frugurpop is keen on doubling production at their kitchen space in Kanjur Marg in Mumbai and will soon be going online. Shoaib of Scoops N Sticks is also keen on going online and plans a store in Delhi. Doshi is set to come out with a store in Mumbai by year end. Rohan and Saransh of Cherry Comet too are opening two more Delhi outlets to be followed by ones in Bangalore and Mumbai.

It’s clear ice cream will never be the same again. Your summer staple is in for a flavour makeover.