Bluebird’s Stumptown Brownie Sundae is for grownups

The signature sundae at Bluebird Homemade Ice Cream in Cross River includes coffee ice cream, chunks of brownies and and fudge. AMY SOWDER PHOTOS

By AMY SOWDER

For 14 years, just down the road from John Jay Middle and High schools in Cross River, Barbara Kessler has made her own ice cream — the good stuff. 

All the flavors of her Bluebird Homemade Ice Cream shop’s namesake dish have 14% milkfat. That’s 4 percentage points more than what the U.S. Food and Drug Administration requires for it to be labeled “ice cream.”

The mouthfeel is rich and creamy like gelato.

“My ice cream is very dense because I refuse to charge for air,” said Kessler, who taught at John Jay for 20 years and also earned a Ph.D. in Spanish literature. “It’s 100% all natural. If I can find organic, I use organic. It’s dessert, but I like to say ‘healthy dessert.’ People can taste the difference.”

That’s the first argument for what makes her Stumptown coffee ice cream Brownie Sundae so special. The three-component dish also mimics a special flavor of ice cream she doesn’t offer all the time: decadence. It’s homemade Stumptown coffee ice cream filled with chunks of homemade brownies, swirled with homemade fudge. She fills a five-gallon bucket with about 2 inches of coffee ice cream, then the add-ins and then she mixes. Then she repeats these three steps until the bucket is filled.

“To make it takes literally hours and hours. I have to freeze each component. And it’s so popular, it never lasts very long,” Kessler said.

The Stumptown coffee that she grinds super-fine for the ice cream never touches the espresso machine handmade in Florence, Italy. It’s premium stuff that shouldn’t be watered down, she said. 

Stumptown Coffee Roasters was founded in Portland, Ore., and is known for precision roasting, signature blends and pioneering Direct Trade coffee, which surpasses Fair Trade with its long-term, face-to-face partnerships with coffee

farmers.

To make the ice cream, first Kessler pours in the base ingredients of milk, cream and sugar in her 800-pound, Italian-imported batch freezer, or ice cream machine.

“I’ve come to understand the importance of not only the ingredients, but also equipment,” she said.

Kessler pours in the liquids on top and the dry ingredients, like sugar and ground coffee, into the front-loading barrel. 

Batch freezers are commercial machines used to quickly freeze and churn liquid bases into a silky, dense product, like gelato, ice cream and sorbet.

The ice cream comes out of the machine like a soft serve. It hardens in the freezer. Kessler keeps her pints in a freezer set at -30 degrees Fahrenheit. 

“It protects the ice cream from aging,” she said. “People will come up from Brooklyn and go back with pints, and it doesn’t melt.”

Kessler doesn’t display her ice cream like most ice cream shops do because, for the most part, the colors aren’t vivid. “That’s because it’s real ingredients. The only color comes from fruit or pumpkin,” she said.

Then there’s the foundation of this grownup goodie: the oh-so fudgy, rich brownies hiding under their crackly top layer. One tender bite reveals a gooey, melt-in-your-mouth texture on your tongue with a hit of intense chocolate, taken to the next level by chocolate chips.

The earthy, roasted depth of the velvety coffee ice cream complements the chocolatey sweetness of the brownie, appealing to adults who haven’t lost their childlike delight.

Angelica Esposito of South Salem was a first-time customer on a recent June day.

“It’s so good, thank you,” she told Kessler as she licked her spoon. “What a treat.”

Lastly comes the homemade fudge sauce, which Kessler makes in batches, then melts to order in the double boiler created specifically for fudge and caramel sauces. For this Stumptown coffee brownie sundae, spoonfuls of the liquid fudge drip over the coffee ice cream at a slow, seductive pace.

Don’t forget to ask for that fudge-cloaked spoon. 

Each flavor of ice cream has its own scoop to avoid cross-contamination. That’s also because she has a roster of vegan flavors anchored by coconut cream.

As for the rest, Kessler offers rotating flavors, such as almond macaroon, (local, in-season only) strawberries & nata (Portuguese for cream), Dutch cookie delight, lemon cookie and real pumpkin (from the gourd). And then there are her regular flavors, such as peanut butter, pistachio, chocolate pretzel and triple berry JJ (named after the schools’ colors).

Kessler also bakes the cakes when the shop is closed. On a given day, you could find lemon, coconut, sour cream-coffee, banana-chocolate and carrot cakes.

The ice cream shop's blackboard-painted wall with names and reviews chalked on almost every inch of space.

Bluebird is as local and independent as it can get for an ice cream shop. Step into the black-and-white checkerboard floor and gaze at the gifted bluebird figurines filling every nook and cranny, the photos of happy customers and a blackboard-painted wall with names and reviews chalked on almost every inch of space. But be warned: The shop is cash only. Prepare ahead or go to the adjacent gas station or bank across the street.

It’s OK. Kessler will wait.

Bluebird Homemade Ice Cream is located at 19 North Salem Road, Cross River; 203-788-8099; new flavors are announced at Bluebird NY on Facebook.