Heap’s Ice Cream, tucked in the corner of Seventh Avenue and First Street in Park Slope, is an all-green — and literally green — ice cream shop that “pays a lot of attention to making [flavors] classic and nostalgic,” Sarah Sanneh, co-founder of Heap’s and celebrated pastry chef, said. “We want them to taste familiar, but also be the best versions of those flavors.”
Heaps is known for its unique take on classic flavors like “Rockier Road” and “Bold Vanilla,” while featuring trendy flavors like its “Mango Sticky Rice” and seasonal “Thai Iced Tea.”
This month, they are collaborating with Lebanese restaurant, Sawa, combining their “Strawberry and Cream” flavor with Sawa’s semolina, pistachio, rose and orange zest cookie into a delectable, satisfying creamy ice cream sandwich. The pistachios add a nuttiness that brings an extra depth of flavor to the tart yet creamy ice cream. The strawberry flavor is “a blend of freeze-dried berries, fresh puree, and strawberry jam for the most intense strawberry flavor you’ve ever tasted,” and not overwhelmingly sweet.
It is the second ice cream sandwich they have rolled out this summer, following their June collab with Brooklyn favorites Win Son Bakery, which fused their “Mango Sticky Rice” flavor with the Taiwanese bakery’s gluten-free Soft Sesame cookie made with toasted soybean flour, caramelized honey, and sesame seeds “for a nutty, toasty, tropical flavor bomb that hits every note.”
“We thought ice cream sandwiches were a really cool vehicle for trying different flavors, different combinations, different kinds of foods,” Sanneh said. “We told people to let their imagination run wild, like if it’s going to be a smushed croissant with some ice cream.”
The goal was “to have fun with it.” It was also to explore “how many different ways we can think around the ice cream sandwich prompt and make it really delicious and fun while reflecting their brand, our brand, and flavors that we both love,” Sanneh said. By using restaurants in and around the area, Heap’s is creating an “extended family” that allows Sanneh and Heap’s to explore different cuisines from an ice cream perspective.
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“It’s a really good time with people that we love, that are fun to work with, that we are inspired by make all this delicious food to share,” Sanneh said. “The creativity was a huge part, creating community too — we’re choosing neighbors and people that are in our extended family culinarily, and being able to bring those people to Park Slope and have them be a part of the Heap’s community is also a huge reason to do it.”
As a pastry chef, Sanneh has had a lot of fun experimenting with different flavors and seeing how different textures could come into play. However, the hardest part of the entire process was getting the right ratios to ensure that the chewy ice cream sandwich consistency was there throughout. It resulted in many shattered frozen cookies while experimenting with minute details, such as checking the differences between flavors that were frozen before and those that weren’t.
However, for the Sawa ice cream sandwich, “it all came together very easily and beautifully,” according to Sanneh, because the “honey notes and the lack of gluten in the semolina flour in the cookie lend themselves to a naturally chewy cookie.”
Heap’s is dedicated to using real ingredients and being “churned locally at a farmhouse creamery in the Hudson Valley.” The dyes for flavors are all natural, including the bright blue used for their “Cotton Candy” flavor, which is from spirulina, a blue-green alga that is healthy for your gut.
Look out for their newest flavor next month, “Blueberry Crisp,” which is “sweet cream based with blueberry jam and cinnamon streusel topping, all in the ice cream with blueberries from Maine.”
You can find them at 171 7th Ave in Park Slope and @heaps.icecream on Instagram for future collaborations in the “Sandwiched!” series.
