CT’s Dairy-Free Ice Cream Strives To Satisfy A Vegan Sweet Tooth

Allergies plagued Pamela Aflalo’s daughter Sophie as a child. Her daughter’s hacking fits, breathing difficulties and coughing kept Aflalo up at nights.

“It was really upsetting, there was nothing I could do,” Aflalo, who lives in Westport, says. “The doctor kept giving us different medicine and nothing worked.”

In desperation, Aflalo tried cutting dairy out of the family’s diet. It worked: Aflalo’s 7-year old daughter immediately got better. There was just one problem: Her daughter missed ice cream.

So Aflalo tried dairy-free, vegan ice cream from the grocery store.

“It tasted terrible, like plastic,” she says. “I didn’t like the ingredients; it had a lot of sugar.”

Aflalo set out to make her own vegan ice cream. She studied at the Natural Culinary Institute in Manhattan and spent a year trying to make a batch of ice cream that would have the just-right texture and taste that her daughter craved.

Aflalo’s friends started ordering batches five years ago. Over time more and more people started requesting her ice cream, pushing her decision to rent a commercial kitchen to sell the ice cream full time. Two years ago, her ice-cream business, Nutty Bunny, was born.

Some Nutty Bunny customers buy the vegan ice cream because of their allergies, some are vegans, and some are just looking for a healthier alternative to ice cream, Aflalo says.

“Don’t judge it because it’s not dairy. Just try it.”

All of the ingredients in Aflalo’s ice cream are listed on the label. She tries to make her cashew-based ice cream as healthy as possible, she says, using maple syrup to sweeten her creations instead of refined sugar.

Her ice cream comes in four flavors: vanilla, chocolate, double chocolate crunch and orange blossom and is sold in a dozen stores, from Brooklyn, N.Y., to Granby.

She makes everything from scratch, using the purest form of cacao for the chocolate flavors and real orange-rinds for the orange blossom, which tastes like a Creamsicle.

“My ice cream is nutrient dense,” she says. “My daughter has it for breakfast sometimes because it has protein in it.”

Aflalo plans to expand into more stores this year and add more flavors such as coffee, strawberry and possibly peach.

Nutty Bunny pints, which cost around $10.99 (prices vary from store to store) and are available at the Organic Market in Westport; the Westport farmers’ market; Bar ‘Bucha in Westport; Sport Hill Farm in Easton; Walter Stewart’s in New Canaan; Henny Penny Farm in Ridgefield; The Pantry and The Stand in Fairfield; The Sweet Beet in Granby; G-Zen Vegan Restaurant in Branford; and Haymaker’s Corner Store in Brooklyn. 203-253-9915 and nutty-bunny.com.

But Nutty Bunny isn’t the only vegan option in Connecticut. Following are a few shops where you can satisfy your sweet tooth for ice cream.

Divine Treasures

The smell of chocolate hits you as you walk into this Manchester sweets shop, which specializes in making European-style vegan chocolates. These chocolates serve as a fitting side-dish (or topping) to the shop’s soft-serve vegan ice cream, which takes the owner, Diane Wageman, a few days to make.

Though she’s surrounded by sweets, Wageman says her health is extremely important to her, which is why she has been vegan for 18 years and why she strives to use as little sugar as possible in all her recipes. Instead, she uses as many raw and fresh ingredients as possible, such as real vanilla, which you can see flecked throughout a spoonful of her soft-serve.

“Sugar is my last ingredient,” she says. “I’m very fussy about the taste.”

Besides the classic vanilla and chocolate, Wageman also tries to offer one unique flavor for her cashew-based ice cream, such as pumpkin or coffee. Her pumpkin soft-serve pairs perfectly with a vegan caramel sauce, which takes her three days to make, and will get you in the mood for fall. However, her favorite topping is a caramelized hazelnut sauce, which she imports from France.

Wageman came up with her unique recipe after spending time in Belgium studying chocolate making, which she says has about one third of the calories of dairy ice cream. She also offers custom-made ice-cream cakes, topped with various chocolates from her store.

“Whatever you like, we can make,” she says.

Divine Treasures, 404 Middle Turnpike W. in Manchester, is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.; and is open on Sundays and Mondays from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Soft serve costs $4.25 for a small cone, $5 for a large and $6 for a sundae. 860-643-2552 and dtchocolates.com.

Sweet Claude’s

Tofutti, the soy-based vegan ice cream offered at this charming Cheshire ice cream shoppe, comes in many homemade flavors. The Cheshire shop’s co-owner, Kelly Anne Pearce, says she tries to keep in stock at least four different flavors, which are constantly rotating.

“I’m always trying to make new flavors,” Pearce says. “It’s tough because I need to make sure there’s at least one with no nuts, because usually when someone has a lactose allergy, they have a couple more.”

Some of the flavors that Pearce makes from fresh, all-natural ingredients are coffee fudge crumble, toasted almond, strawberry, and vanilla with a raspberry swirl. She plans to experiment with using the new almond-milk Bailey liqueur, which she says will go well with the base soy-flavor of the ice cream.

“Soy is a pervasive taste. You don’t want to mask it, people know it’s there. You kind of want to work with it,” Pearce says.

Though Pearce loves dairy ice cream, there are certain things she likes better about Tofutti.

“I like the consistency better,” she says. “It’s never too hard or soft, it’s always just right.”

Some of her customers, such as Ed Parzyck of Naugatuck, order the Tofutti by the tub, because they believe it’s better than anything they can buy in a store.

“Ice cream is hard to come by made locally like this. Nothing compares to going down and getting Sweet Claude’s,” Parzyck says. “Even if I weren’t lactose intolerant, it’d be hard to go back to eating regular ice cream.”

Sweet Claude’s, 828 S. Main St., in Cheshire, is open Monday through Sunday from noon to 9 p.m. Tofutti costs $3.60 for a small, $4.85 for a regular, and $5.85 for a large. 203-272-4237 and sweetclaudes.com.

Salem Valley Farm

The smell of Salem Valley Farm’s blueberry soy-based ice cream is reminiscent of a fresh-baked blueberry muffin. The Salem ice cream shop offers two homemade flavors at a time, which rotate regularly. Store owner Jane Scacciaferro says popular favorites include blueberry, which is made with whole blueberries from Maine, and dirty nuts, which is chocolate with a walnut-fudge swirl.

“Our customers want the chunk,” Scacciaferro says. “We make it way better than the supermarket because we use top notch ingredients.”

Ingredients are mixed in by hand, and Scacciaferro says they’re always experimenting with new flavors like pina colada. The decision to offer dairy-free ice cream came four years ago.

“The demand in the market’s changing,” she says. “As more and more allergies come out, we have more and more choices. It’s not just ice cream anymore.”

Salem Valley Farm, 20 Darling Road in Salem, is open Monday through Thursday from noon to 9 p.m and Friday through Sunday noon to 10 p.m. The dairy free ice cream costs $5 for a small, $5.64 for a medium and $6.59 for a large. 860-859-2980 and salemvalleyfarmsicecream.com

Main St. Creamery And Café

The owners of this quaint country-vibes ice cream shop in Wethersfield understand diet restrictions. Kathy Clarke and her husband, who bought the shop in May, are vegetarians, which they say motivates them to provide dairy-free ice cream from the company So Delicious at their shop. Clarke says she understands the feeling of frustration one can get when there’s few food options.

“Every time So Delicious comes up with a new flavor, we bring it on board because when you go into an establishment it’s really nice to have a choice,” she says. “Some places have sorbet which is nice, but it’s not ice cream.”

As one of the few ice cream parlors in the area that offers dairy-free ice cream, Clarke estimates that roughly 10 percent of her customers order the vegan ice cream, which they can get in a cup, cone, milkshake or ice-cream cake form.

Though they currently carry roughly a dozen flavors which can be cashew-based, soy-based, or coconut-milk based, Clarke is trying to make the dairy-free ice cream products more local.

“We’ve been exploring different ways that we can offer it whether it’s through making our own or through a local vendor,” she says.

Chocolate, Oreo, and salted caramel crunch are among Clarke’s favorite dairy-free ice cream offerings in the shop. One customer, Jessie Osowky, who was visiting family in town, says the ice cream was delicious.

“I usually live vicariously and watch everyone else enjoy their ice-cream,” she says.

But at Main St. Creamery and Café, she can have a scoop of her own.

Main St. Creamery and Café, 271 Main St. in Wethersfield, is open Monday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Their diary-free ice cream costs $4 for a small, $4.50 for a medium, and $5 for a large. 860-529-0509 and mainstreetcreamery.com

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