Product: Ice-cream and gelato.
Where: Millgrove, Yarra Ranges Shire, Wurundjeri Country.
Who: Former bar worker and hospitality expert Lana Emmerton.
Lana, you’re called Cookie Grove – where are the cookies?
I started out making cookies as well, but the people loved the ice-cream more. So ice-cream and gelato it became.
You work with local suppliers?
Yes, I love my community. I go to a little old lady up the road called Maria who keeps bees. That’s where I get my honey. I drive to a local farmer in Powelltown for my incredibly flavoursome blueberries and raspberries. A cheesemaker, Mill Grove Dairy, has moved into one of the shops next door, and I use its fresh cheese and white-mould cheese to make a cheese with walnuts candied in balsamic vinegar.
You make some fun flavours.
For Australia Day, I made a Vegemite and butter ice-cream. I started with a burnt-butter base, with all its rich and sweet aromas. I then made a toffee with some Vegemite rolled through it. That saltiness and umami work well with the slight bitterness of the toffee – think salted caramel. For Chinese New Year, I made a dulce de leche base to which I added all those sweet flavours of Chinese five-spice. I then made a toffee with soy sauce – again, those salty umami flavours working with the richness of toffee. It works a wonder.
You have a lot of skill.
I worked in bars for 20 years and have been exposed to many different flavours. Making ice-cream is a lot like making cocktails. You start with your base – in this case a chocolate base or a fruit base – and add complementary flavours. Sometimes it’s enough just to make a very beautiful vanilla ice-cream using the finest vanilla beans. But this was a business that started during Covid and took on its own life.
Do you make for other people?
I make a vegan vanilla ice-cream for Nancy’s café in Yarra Junction. Trust me, it’s delicious – it’s made with rice bran oil, coconut milk, flavoured with bourbon vanilla bean and emulsified with vegetable gum.
How do we taste your ice-creams?
Come and see me at my shop at 3043 Warburton Highway, Millgrove. If you’re riding on the Warburton Rail Trail, make sure you stop.