Courtesy Marissa Brodie
There’s a lot to defrost in a question like this, and the most obvious place to start would be, “What the heck is New Zealand–style ice cream, and why should I care when there’s such great ice cream in St. Louis?”
There’s no disputing that St. Louis knows what it’s doing when it comes to ice cream, as evidenced by the amarena cherry-studded, alcohol-infused Manhattan at Clementine’s, the immensely flavorful guayaba (guava) ice cream from La Vallesana, and the cotton candy and chocolate cookie-studded cookie monster from Serendipity. There’s nitrogen ice cream at Ices Plain and Fancy, ice cream made in old-fashioned copper candy kettles at Crown Candy Kitchen and birthday cake, and strawberry soda soft-serve at Nudo House. And, of course, Ted Drewes has put St. Louis on the map for frozen custard.
So why would we need New Zealand–style ice cream, a mixture of frozen fruit and regular ice cream put into a special machine that comes out sort of like soft-serve? “Because even after traveling to every continent, the best ice cream I ever had was a mixed berry New Zealand–style ice cream cone,” says Hap Cameron, a New Zealand native who was the first person to introduce his beloved ice cream to the U.S. in 2015.
Courtesy Marissa Brodie
Hap Cameron inside his ice cream truck
Though Cameron's Happy Cones ice cream truck and two brick-and-mortar shops are located in Colorado, he has inspired others to start opening shops across the U.S. and farther afield. “A lot of people reach out to me who are thinking about opening a shop and want advice,” he says. “I had a woman reach out to me from Dubai. I see the interest increasing every year.”
Cameron says real fruit ice cream, as it’s known in New Zealand—which he opted to call New Zealand–style ice cream for ease of understanding here—made quite a splash in his hometown of Nelson, New Zealand, and it later took off across the country. “Every berry orchard in Nelson has real fruit ice cream,” he says. “There are trailers all around selling it, but a lot of Americans come into my shop and say they’ve never seen it when they were in New Zealand. It’s very easy to miss. It’s not like a big chain, as it’s mostly in rural areas and orchards.
Courtesy Marissa Brodie
“Before I moved to America to be with my wife, I went to visit Dennis Little, a family friend," he continues. "When we were having coffee, my dad said, ‘Hap, come have a look at Dennis’ machine in his garage.’ There was the Little Jem real fruit ice cream blending machine on his work bench. Dennis had a berry orchard, and his brother, Chris, is an engineer, and made the machine. Dennis said Americans love this ice cream when they come to his orchard. No one was doing it in the U.S, so my wife and I bought a 1989 school bus and built it out. I called Dennis and he sent me his machine—the first one brought into the U.S.”
Courtesy Marissa Brodie
Although it’s a relatively simple concept, Cameron says the frozen fruit, along with a special auger in the machine, helps give the ice cream its consistency. “The consistency is part of the magic,” he says. "The color and flavor come from the fruit. People love that it’s not really heavy. One-third of it is just fruit.” While it looks like soft-serve, Cameron says the consistency is harder because it’s made with regular ice cream.
Here in St. Louis, Qui Tran knows a thing or two about soft-serve. When researching ramen recipes for Nudo House, he and his wife traveled across the country, trying ramen and soft-serve at every place they could find (since, Tran says, his wife had the idea to add soft-serve to the menu).
In his research, New Zealand–style ice cream often came up. “I’ve never had it but was reading about it many years ago and thought it sounded amazing,” he recalls. "It’s very unique—like a hybrid of soft-serve and ice cream. The actual machine is different from a soft-serve machine.”
Tran says he loved the idea of using fruit mixed into the ice cream. “A lot of Asian soft-serve has fruit in it,” he says. “You always see bits of mango or passion fruit, so we like to blend fruit in our ice cream. At Nudo, if we’re making fruit soft-serve, then we’re also cooking and puréeing the fruit ourselves.”
It’s worth those extra touches for the end product, he says: “Something as simple as ice cream can make you smile the whole week."
