Sometimes you leave it to the experts. Sometimes — particularly when ridiculously amazing ice cream from Phinizy and Phebe is involved — you don’t.
With flavors like goat cheese caramel and fluffnut — studded with Ritz crackers, Marshmallow Fluff, peanut butter, caramel and chocolate — do-it-yourself ice cream masters Jess Eddy and Crista Freeman, aka Phinizy and Phebe, have managed to introduce something shiny and new to an ice cream scene already packed with inventive flavors from folks like Blue Marble and Van Leeuwen.
Better yet, they’re doing it all from the confines of their teeny Williamsburg kitchen. DIY, indeed!
The confections aren’t in stores yet, but watch out, these ladies are on fire. After debuting earlier this month at the Brooklyn Lyceum, the duo has already found itsdelf bombarded with e-mails, clamoring for more.
Web gurus by day, the pair started off innocently enough, taking up ice cream making as a fun indoor hobby over the winter. Soon though, they were hooked.
“We’ve been making ice cream together since about February — just for fun,” said Freeman. “Then it became this crazy obsession. We were prototyping two flavors a weekend. One time, we even made four.”
For many of the flavors, the two take inspiration from their childhoods growing up in Maine (Eddy) and the south (Freeman) — like for instance the Fluffnut, which was inspired by fluffernutter sandwiches their moms used to make them as kids.
This spring, they decided to take their obsession mainstream, bringing it to fairs, like one at the Brooklyn Lyceum.
For now, the duo is working in home kitchen-sized four quart “nano batches,” but an expansion is on the horizon. Eventually, they’ll sell it in stores, and perhaps offer ice cream delivery or open up a parlor.
In the meantime, catch them at the Hester Street fair in Manhattan June 12 and 13, and the Homemade Brooklyn pop-up shop on June 25.
Watch out Van Leeuwen — looks like someone’s about to give you a run for your artisanal ice cream money.
