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These days, vegan ice cream is one of the hottest trends to hit the food world — just ask Ben & Jerry’s or Blue Bunny. And now, cult favorite ice creamery Emack & Bolio’s is experimenting with non-dairy, too.

The company, based in Brooklyn, New York, has approximately 25 stores across the country (heavily concentrated in New York and Massachusetts) — including a couple in international locales. Owner Jarrad Rook says he’s been working with coconut milk for a little over a year, trying to perfect the right recipe.

“It was a lot of trial and error to really nail down a recipe that works,” he tells Latest Vegan News. With the first batches, the ice cream tasted good, but didn’t store or scoop well. Finally, with the right combinations of ingredients, he’s in the process of finalizing some non-dairy options.

Included in the initial flavors are cookies by Ponycakes, a New York-based company that makes vegan, gluten-free cookie sandwiches. Owner Michelle Gasparovic happens to have a warehouse space just down the hall from Emack and Bolio’s, so the partnership was a natural one.

As far as flavors, so far they’ve done a dark chocolate peanut butter cookie (with chocolate peanut butter cookies) and a roasted banana brown sugar (with banana chai cookies). This winter, Rook plans on developing additional variations, and hopefully rolling the products out to all Emack & Bolio’s stores.

“As we go forward in time it’s really become a very popular thing to have vegan options and try and create something that tastes really good,” says Rook. He says people have cited many different reasons for requesting vegan options, including a lot of lactose intolerance.

“We’re all looking forward to next summer when we can finally offer a full line of two to three flavors and have it in all our stores.”

(Currently, the vegan flavors are still in the testing phase, though if you stop by the Brooklyn location, you might be able to snag some.)

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