An Arab entrepreneur has turned her country’s national crop into creative new ice cream recipes.
It needed several years of experimentation, and she broke several ice cream machines before perfecting her soft-serve blends, but the result is a truly one-of-a-kind ice cream parlor.
Amira Al Dosari is the founder and pioneer behind date-based soft serve ice cream. For this native of Abu Dhabi, the date is an icon of her nation’s economy, history, agriculture, and culture of hospitality.
Though heavy in sugars, dates also contain fiber such that dates have been found to lower circulating blood sugar levels. This is because the fruit’s fibrous matrix slows the release and absorption of sugar contained within.
Al Dosari never imagined using dates to make ice cream, but at age 53 she took an ice cream making class and was disturbed by quantity of ice cream made with pre-prepared mixes, artificial colorants, and refined sugar.
“I was thinking about what the future could be for (children) who eat a lot of sugar when they are that young. How would that affect their body?” she told CNN’s Youmna Sukkar in a brilliant featured story.
Date connoisseurs will know that there are many date varieties with varying textures and flavors. Al Dosari thought to take one of the softest and sweetest varieties known as a kholas date, and see if it were possible to make ice cream without any added sugar.
She told Sukkar that sugar in soft-serve ice cream doesn’t only make it sweet, but also consistently soft and creamy. It took a long time, and was a big challenge to find a way to render the kholas dates down into a product that could give soft serve ice cream these properties. But that’s exactly what she did.
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Now she’s working on her 448th flavor of date ice cream from her shop called Ice Station near Abu Dhabi’s Zayed Port. The date is the star of the show there, as it not only contributes to the sugar in the ice cream but to multiple flavors.
The pits are roasted and ground into a coffee-like substance that’s poured over ice cream to mimic the Italian affogato, while the date palm fronds contribute the bitterness, antioxidant content, and vivid green of the “matcha” flavor.
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“We know that the entire plant is quite safe for consumption, so it was just more about how we could present this in a way that is enjoyable for everyone?” said Al Dosari’s daughter, Ghalia Al Mazrouei, who works as a sustainability consultant and helped her mother find new ways to utilize the date palm.
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