Cushioned in the middle of Brenham, Texas, amongst the rolling hills of bluebonnets stands a deliciously creative corporation named Blue Bell Creameries. For over one-hundred years, Blue Bell has been a force behind some of the most beloved ice creams on the market today, including Homemade Vanilla, Cookies & Cream, Mint Chocolate Chip, and numerous other flavors.

The dessert corporation doesn’t stop with its signature line of flavors, however. Every two months, Blue Bell rolls out a new flavor for customers to scoop and sample. The few lucky ice creams that gather a devoted following are sometimes even invited to stick around permanently. This July, which happens to be National Ice Cream Month, Blue Bell introduces its newest flavor, Summer Strawberry Pie, to dessert lovers around the state. TEXAS MONTHLY talked with Brenda Valera, director of research and development for Blue Bell, about the creamery’s newest flavor, the flavor creation process, and the return of Christmas Cookies… in July.

Tell me how about the new flavor Summer Strawberry Pie. 

The ice cream is similar to a traditional strawberry pie. It’s a play on those pies people make with fresh strawberries and whipped cream. We made a strawberry ice cream, put some pie crust in it, and incorporated a whipped topping swirl.

Touch on the flavor-creation process for me. 

We think about new flavors all the time. It’s part of what we do. Whenever we are in restaurants or looking at dessert menus, looking at food blogs, food journals, cookbooks, or what’s popular these days, we come up with ideas. We have a program where we gather around two-hundred ideas, and from amongst those we take about twenty-five ideas and start working on samples. From those twenty-five samples, we narrow them down to about ten or twelve samples to submit to meetings that our staff force has to evaluate for use in the coming year. From those ten to twelve, we narrow it down to five or six new flavors for the coming year. We have a new flavor coming about every two months.

You guys once came up with a pickle ice cream. Did that make its way to production?

I’ve been here over thirty years, and that happened before I came. I don’t know how that all played out, actually. [Laughs].

One flavor I was surprised to hear didn’t take off was the Peanut Butter & Jelly. I thought that would be a huge hit. 

It was actually a very good tasting ice cream, but for some reason the name just wasn’t appealing. I think people didn’t buy it because they related it to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. It had a great flavor to it, but it just did not sell.

Are there any other new flavors, beside the Summer Strawberry Pie, that are coming out soon?

Another flavor that’s coming out in July is called Christmas Cookies in July, and it’s only going to be available in the month of July. When we released it this last fall, it was called Christmas Cookies. It has three different types of cookies in it – chocolate chip, snickerdoodle, and sugar cookie – with red candy cane sprinkles, and a green icing swirl. People loved it so much that we knew we had to bring it back.

Tagged: Blue Bell, Brenda Valera, brenham, Christmas Cookies in July, ice cream, Layne Lynch, Summer Strawberry Pie

Houston is no stranger to food trucks- traditional Mexican, Central, and South American trucks have been here for decades, and their influence has worked its way well into the four-star restaurant scene.

The restaurant community in Houston has fought these trucks off for some time, but the advent of “chef-driven” and “gourmet” trucks have brought new light to the subject, and the restaurant stalwarts recently have changed their tune, thanks in part to local-driven efforts by JR Cohen’s “Stay Local, Grow Together” campaign, Houston’s mayor Annise Parker, and Laura Spanjian, Houston’s Sustainability Director.

There are no less than ten new food trucks opening their stainless-steel door flaps in Houston every single week. Some have held their ground, and many have failed. Most come from Austin, and have failed due to a misunderstanding of the dynamics of the City of Houston’s antiquated regulations, without knowledge of the recent progress made by pro-food truck groups in the city.

One group of crazed hip-hop fans jumped into Houston’s food truck craze right at its climax, and they’ve taken the city by storm.

Matt Marcus (a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America), Ryan Soroka (a business/hotel and restaurant UH grad) and Alex Vassilakidis have been friends since childhood, and they started the “Eatsie Boys” truck last year.  It was a huge hit, until the summer dragged on into brutality.  They could handle cooking in the truck, but the fact remained that it was just too hot outside to bring a big crowd out to eat outdoors.

So they decided to start an ice cream truck. The idea was simple: Use great ingredients, and name your flavors after Beastie Boys songs.

Since the Eatsie Boys ice cream truck turned loose in the late summer, it’s brought wild crowds from abound. Maybe it’s just ice cream in hot weather, but it probably has a lot to do with perfect timing, and a marketing campaign that Taco Bell would kill for. Legendary Houston rapper Bun-B  (of UGK fame), with over 305,000 Twitter followers,  has been a big proponent of the Eatsie Boys truck since trying them out at local music venue.

I talked to Matt and Ryan over a cold scoop of  “Makers Mark Some Noise” with Golden Grahams. (more…)

Tagged: Alex Vassilakidis, Allison Cook, Bun-B, Guns and Tacos, Houston, ice cream, Matt Marcus, Ryan Soroka, Trailer Thursday

Picture this: It’s one of those brutally hot days, when the Texas air is as still and thick as homespun cream. Far in a South Austin field, behind a row of trailers, there’s a girl. She’s standing in a tiny patch of shade, holding something in each hand. Closer, closer now. We don’t want to scare the wildlife. Now you can see the outline of the huge, fresh-baked cookies, the ice cream sandwiched between them melting faster than an ice sculpture in August, dripping down her wrists and onto her milk-studded, poorly chosen black T-shirt. On her face there’s an expression of pure, unadulterated five-year-old joy. And more ice cream and cookie spackle than there are summertime freckles.

Don’t judge. So what if I had two ice cream sandwiches? I dare you to brave Coolhaus and not flash back to the footprint of your childhood. Except, remember that bland vanilla ice cream between two chocolate wafers, the way the columns of chocolate stuck perfectly to your fingers? Those sandwiches will always have my heart, just as I’ll always love candy necklaces. But comparatively, Coolhaus’s skyscrapers are like Willy Wonka’s everlasting gobstoppers: architecturally interesting, edibly stimulating.

And here we’ve hit on Coolhaus’ shtick (every trailer has to have one, after all). A riff on the name of the famed architect Rem Koolhaas and the influential Bauhaus movement, Coolhaus serves “architecturally inspired ice cream sandwiches.” Translation? A cookie roof and floor with ice cream walls, served to you from a 1985 vintage mall truck with green glass bricks on the roof.  The mini-chain started in L.A. in 2008 and now has outposts in New York and Austin. All of their offerings are made fresh with local ingredients, and their ice cream is hormone- and antibiotic-free. Plus, they serve their sammies in edible rice-paper wrappers. How tastefully green is that?

Especially in the delirious Austin summer, you’ve got to admire Coolhaus’s philosophy: When it’s as hot as an oven out, bake cookies! Then use them to anchor lusciously cold ice cream. My favorite was the ever-popular double-chocolate cookie and Dirty Mint ice cream combo. It’s hard to beat just-baked, decadent cookies with the right amount of crunch and a huge scoop of thick, minty ice cream to cool you down.

I also loved the mascarpone-and-fig ice cream: light and understated, with big hunks of juicy, balsamic fig. Though the soft, cinnamony snickerdoodle cookies were great, I was disappointed with Coolhaus’s recommended combination. Instead, I wish I’d tried the ginger cookies, which promised to be less bland.

But there to save the day was the I.M. Pei-nut butter ice cream with chocolate chip cookies, bright and shining as the Louvre Pyramid, melodious as the notes echoing in the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center. What else can I say? This is my dream dessert, come to life. The peanut butter was rich and creamy, a perfectly smooth compliment to America’s favorite chewy-crunchy cookies. But if you’re looking for something less traditional, don’t despair: Depending on the day, the truck serves interesting offerings like lambrusco ice cream and oatmeal cookies with baked apple ice cream, not to mention gastro-experiments like brown-butter-with-candied-bacon ice cream.

As much as I love standing by a trailer in the 104-degree heat with ice cream dripping down my arms, it is a bit ironic that Coolhaus’s architectural bent has not lent them a building with four walls and a blasting air-conditioning unit. But then again, they could just as well riff on old Corbu and say that food trailers are architecture, buildings are bourgeois.

Two trucks: “Smokey,” 3600 Lamar, Thur & Fri 3–8, Sat 12–8. “Betty” roams; for hours and location, check their website and Twitter.

Posted by Megan Giller. To read more from Megan Giller, visit her website at www.megangiller.com.

Tagged: Coolhaus, dessert, ice cream, ice cream sandwiches, Trailer Thursday