Ten­nille Al­leyne

Say good­bye to run of the mill, hack­neyed flavours of ice cream and hel­lo to a new rev­o­lu­tion of flavours that are bound to have your taste buds scream­ing for more. Liz La Bor­de is not a stranger to in­no­va­tion as one of Trinidad and To­ba­go's pre­miere cater­ers for over 20 years, but now with her cater­ing ex­pe­ri­ence be­hind her, she has turned her at­ten­tion in­to mak­ing one of the world's most pop­u­lar desserts – ice cream. Liz at­tend­ed an ice cream mak­ing course at Penn State Uni­ver­si­ty, the said course that the world fa­mous ice cream duo Ben and Jer­ry's com­plet­ed be­fore go­ing in­to busi­ness. "I learnt the sci­ence be­hind mak­ing ice cream. It helped me to recog­nise pre­mi­um ver­sus cheap com­mer­cial ice cream. Much of what we con­sume nowa­days is just ice milk not re­al­ly re­al ice cream," La Bor­de opined. At the end of the course she learnt how to make scoopable ice cream and soft serve at the school's in-house ice cream fac­to­ry.

Ac­cord­ing to La Bor­de, the amount of air that is whipped in­to the ice cream when mak­ing it de­ter­mines its den­si­ty. The less air whipped gives a more pre­mi­um taste where the flavours are rich­er and more con­cen­trat­ed. The more air whipped in­to the ice cream re­sults in a cheap­er fin­ish where one may find a lot of froth in the prod­uct which pre­vents it from freez­ing prop­er­ly. La Bor­de said, "I want­ed to make re­al­ly nice gourmet ice cream with flavours that are pleas­ant to the Tri­ni palate. It's like tak­ing your grand­moth­er's recipe and bring­ing it in­to the 21st cen­tu­ry," the ice cream mak­er em­pha­sised. When La Bor­de re­turned to Trinidad, she de­cid­ed to open her own brand of home­made gourmet ice cream called Sweet Spot Ice Cream. Ac­cord­ing to this ice cream en­tre­pre­neur, her un­usu­al flavour of­fer­ings were al­so shaped by her ex­po­sure at school. "Now we find that flavours are evolv­ing and the world is play­ing with the sweet and savoury con­cept. This ac­tu­al­ly guid­ed my choice of flavours," she said. With flavour of­fer­ings such as crème brulee, choco­late stout, sesame seed, caramel and salt­ed nuts, toast­ed co­conut and a host of oth­ers, La Bor­de has def­i­nite­ly cre­at­ed a niche of her own. I had the good for­tune of sam­pling the black pep­per ice cream where sur­pris­ing­ly, the pep­per played nice­ly against the sweet of the cream.

It was not over­pow­er­ing, but mut­ed enough to tease your palate with a pep­pery taste. The sesame seed was al­so de­light­ful with a mild flavour­ing that one would not ex­pect in ice cream but is quite a stand­out on her menu of flavours. The caramel and salt nuts may have been the biggest sur­prise of all but def­i­nite­ly em­bod­ies her play on the sweet and savoury con­cept. The salt­ed peanuts bal­anced the sweet of the caramel and cre­at­ed a nice jux­ta­po­si­tion of taste and flavour just in one mouth­ful. Ac­cord­ing to La Bor­de, all her in­gre­di­ents and the ice cream mak­ing process could take about two days to com­plete. "All prop­er ice creams have a cus­tard base which I cook on the stove," she said. "Af­ter the cook­ing process, you then re­duce the tem­per­a­ture through the ice bath process where it is left in the re­frig­er­a­tor to ripen for a cou­ple hours. The mix­ture is then churned." So what dif­fer­en­ti­ates her gourmet ice cream from all oth­ers? "I use heavy cream and milk in­stead of mak­ing it pure­ly milk based. What re­sults is a creami­er tex­ture that you would find in Eu­ro­pean styled ice creams."

She has mar­ket­ed main­ly through word of mouth and is al­ready de­liv­er­ing to restau­rants and her grow­ing clien­tele. "The re­sponse has been ex­cel­lent. Peo­ple are con­stant­ly re-or­der­ing and the cus­tomers al­so help to chal­lenge me be­cause they ask me to make flavours of ice cream that re­sem­ble their favourite desserts. That's how I got in­to sor­bets in the first place," she re­vealed. For now, La Bor­de is con­cen­trat­ing on build­ing her brand; cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion and brand loy­al­ty are her main goals. She shies away from ex­tend­ing her prod­uct line be­cause she does want to dis­tract her­self from her main ob­jec­tives. "My ul­ti­mate goal is to have my ice cream in every­body's freez­er" she said with a laugh. "I want to con­tin­ue ex­per­i­ment­ing with flavours and in­gre­di­ents and mak­ing the best ice cream pos­si­ble. In time to come, I want to be the num­ber one choice of frozen dessert in the Caribbean." www.face­book.com/sweetspo­tice­cream