Jenni Britton Bauer and daughter Greta visit Jeni's 21st Ave. location
On the heels of opening the fifth outpost of her Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams earlier this month in the Hill Center in Brentwood, company founder Jeni Britton Bauer was back in Nashville to celebrate her summer partnership with another local favorite, Yazoo Brewing Co. As part of the company's summer collection of flavors, called American Licks, Jeni’s has officially rolled out Yazoo Sue with Rosemary Bar Nuts, available in pints or by the scoop in all 30 of the chain’s links until the end of the summer.
The ice cream is made using Yazoo’s recipe for a cherry wood-smoked porter mixed with heaping helpings of almonds, cashews, peanuts and pecans dusted with rosemary, brown sugar and cayenne pepper. The combination offers a delicious interplay of hot and cold, sweet and salty, smoky and creamy, with a lingering slow burn from the pepper.
I spoke with Bauer while she was in town for the Sue kickoff event at Yazoo’s taproom, and she had nothing but positive things to say about Music City. “Nashville is like my second home. I really love coming here,” she says. “I love how Nashville is open to outsiders, but they still hold everyone to high standards. I think we fit in with that culture.”
As the company has grown, Bauer has to keep her eye in product quality. “We can still do artisan products at larger scales, and it’s important for us to grow big enough to make a genuine impact with the dairies and growers that supply our ingredients. We use more than a hundred different ingredients to make all of our flavors, so we have to make connections with all those suppliers so that we can operate as true partners.”
Yazoo founder Linus Hall was one of the early makers with whom Bauer struck up a relationship. “I had already made a Russian imperial stout ice cream,” she recalls. “I really like the flavor-to-liquid ratio in that beer. When I first tried Sue, I knew it would make a fantastic ice cream. I found out that Linus’ wife Lila liked to make her own bar nut mix, so we added that in to contribute a nice umami to the ice cream.”
The result is a bold combination of flavors that doesn’t scrimp on the milk fat. Now that it’s back in the market, summer is officially underway for the legions of Yazoo and Jeni’s fans.
