Jeni’s unveils new seasonal ice cream flavor made with Ohio-grown acorns

Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams is well known for pushing the boundaries with interesting and unusual flavors, and this fall, they may have outdone themselves.

Jeni’s is debuting a brand-new seasonal flavor that uses real, Ohio-grown acorns, and is available in limited quantities starting today. And did we mention it took five years of experimentation to come to market?

Called Appalachian Acorn Pie, the new flavor uses foraged acorns to create an acorn ice cream base with a graham cracker swirl. The Columbus ice cream brand describes it as “nutty and sweet —somewhere in the realm of hazelnut, coconut, and chestnut.”

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While it seems easy enough to grab a handful of acorns from your backyard, the reality is far more complicated, and resulted in Jeni’s spending half a decade puzzling over logistics.

Unlike commercial nuts, acorns–while plentiful in the United States and used as a cold-weather food source for Native Americans–are not domestically regulated or distributed. After wondering how to incorporate acorns into a fall flavor five years ago, Jeni’s first looked into international sources, none of which ended up working out, although these initial experiments sparked a hunger (literally) in the Jeni’s team.

“The problem was, those early international sources for acorn flour gave us a first taste of what this ice cream could be, which was so fragrant and nutty and beautiful. It was unlike anything I’d ever eaten, but also felt wildly familiar,” said Jeni’s senior director of innovation Beth Stallings in a press release. “From that moment, we knew we had to find a way to make this flavor, whatever it took. And it took a lot of amazing work.”

The Jeni’s team eventually paired with Carroll County agricultural co-op Route 9 Action Center, which was able to forage local acorns in quantities high enough to use in the new flavor. The co-op was also able to leach the tannins from the acorns, which create a strong bitterness if not removed. The last step in the sourcing process was to send the acorns to a nearby Amish farm (a move that required the use of snail mail, community phones, and in-person meetings) where they were milled into flour.

Appalachian Acorn Pie is available in limited quantities at Jeni’s scoop shops and online now.

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