Metro Roundup: Pepper Place welcomes Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams
Birminghamians have flocked to Pepper Place to grab an Instagram-worthy scoop of ice cream since Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams opened its first Alabama location there in June.
Jeni Britton Bauer is a James Beard Award-winning chef, and she started her ice cream business in Ohio while in art school. But she said she always had Birmingham on her mind.
“I knew some of the history of Birmingham, but I had never been until a few years ago,” she said. “I was on a road trip ... and stopped in Birmingham for a couple of days. And I really just fell in love with this city.”
Bauer takes a different approach to making ice cream. Her team only uses fresh ingredients, and they avoid things like stabilizers and chemicals that can be found in ice cream from other vendors.
“We actually make ice cream with just milk proteins that give it body and texture,” she said. “So we don’t use egg yolk either. It’s just really fresh, really beautiful, very simple ice cream. But it’s so flavorful that then we can put all these other beautiful experiences on top of it, like pralines or brown butter or coffee.”
Many ingredients come from bakers and suppliers that her team knows personally, and this makes it even better, she said.
It’s more than just the ice cream though, Bauer said — it’s how customers feel when they’re in the space.
“We’re just a very creative, very open company,” she said. “The idea of flavor is very important to us, like celebrating everyone’s flavor. We just love people so much, and I think that’s so much a part of it.”
Depending on the season, Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams will have between 16-22 ice cream flavors for customers to choose from, and more flavors are sometimes available by the pint.
“Every time you go there, there should be something new, if not a few things,” Bauer said.
Bauer eats a few scoops of her Brown Butter Almond Brittle almost every single night, she said. Tart flavors are also some of her favorites, she said, because she uses a buttermilk that’s made from a small dairy just for her team.
“It brings tartness to the cream and the milk, and it just has an extraordinary texture,” she said.
To celebrate joining the Pepper Place community, Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams also partnered with Birmingham Candy Company to create a limited-edition flavor, Praline Pecans. Birmingham Candy Co. sent Bauer and her team an order of pralines, and then Bauer perfected an ice cream flavor that tasted similar to the Birmingham pralines. Making caramel ice cream flavors can be a complex, even dangerous process, Bauer said, but it’s one of her team’s specialties.
“It’s a good one to taste — it’s very emotional,” she said.
Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams is open daily from noon to 11 p.m. Visit jenis.olo.com for more information.