Karla’s Kreamery: Chef Karla Sorrentino Starts Micro Batch Ice Cream Business

As I sit in the Tall Pine Bar in New Canaan’s Adirondack Store waiting for my meeting with Karla Sorrentino, sipping on a cold brew that’s making my heart race even more after a workout an hour prior. I welcome the jitters and the calorie burn that coincides with coffee, because later I’m diving into a Hot Capi pizza from Joe’s, and after it, whatever creamy treat I knew Karla was about to bring for me to sample.

In she walks and immediately smiles and extends her hand for a shake. “Forget that,” I say, “We’ve been chatting on social media for YEARS!” We hug. It’s a miracle we’ve never met. Between our mutual friends and her husband, Nick, it’s seemingly impossible.

She hands me a mysterious looking Ziplock with another bag inside it containing dry ice and a tiny cup of halva peanut crunch ice cream. I admittedly wanted to eat the tahina ice cream swirled with halva, salted peanuts, and bittersweet chocolate on the spot. I figured it’d be great after pizza later on, and also odd to shove it down in a coffee shop where I didn’t buy it.

Left to right: pandan cookies & cream; lavender latte with ultra blue lavender buds imported from France, single-origin Vietnamese coffee and demerara sugar; blueberry crisp. Each pint is made fresh, packed by hand, and ideally your pints are picked up ASAP for optimal freshness. “I’m envisioning how someone will scoop it out, so aligning textures and the mix ins is important,” Sorrentino says. “I want it to also look aesthetically pleasing. It’s a process. I want to make the best version of whatever it is.”

Salted Sakura made with salt cured cherry blossoms from Kyoto.

For Sorrentino, micro batch ice cream is a new business venture, but ice cream making isn’t new to her.

She’s a chef, and that tale starts when she was a teenager growing up in Stamford. “I got one of those adult continuing education books and in it was a cooking class led by a CIA alum from Manero’s in Greenwich,” she recalls “I asked my parents because it seemed fun. It was once a week for like 16 weeks. I could see people thinking, like, ‘why is this random 15-year-old in here?’”

Despite graduating at the top of her Stamford High class, plus being a generally creative person, and a drummer who considered going to Berkeley, Sorrentino decided on culinary school. “I knew nothing about the industry,” she says. “I looked at Johnson & Wales, but figured I’d want to go to the most prestigious school, which is the CIA. My grades weren’t an issue, but at that time you needed industry experience, cooking experience. I began as a hostess for Brock’s in Stamford, then eased by way into the back of house. I ended up moving onto Viscardi’s in Greenwich doing prep, then lunch service, and as a line cook. I got accepted to the CIA when I was 18.”

Post culinary school, Sorrentino applied her newly learned French techniques at Todd English’s Miramar in Westport and at Stonehenge in Ridgefield under Christian Bertrand, an old school chef that, at the time, was tough restaurant for a female to break in at. “He was my first mentor as I did an externship for him, but he didn’t want to hire me,” Sorrentino says. “He thought girls should be in the pastry program. I sent him a letter every day for two weeks. He finally got sick of me and hired me to work the line. It was an amazing experience.”

Karla on some of her travels

Sorrentino would later go on to work for Bill Taibe, Nicholas Martschenko (with whom she attended the CIA with at the same time), Tim LaBant, and would randomly help out whenever a chef friend needed an assist. She’d stay at restaurants for a year or two here and there, learning and working every station imaginable. Eventually, at 30, and with a supportive husband (Nick is also an accomplished chef) she took a break to travel, practice yoga, and become a reiki practitioner, stating she wanted to “become inspired.”

When she hopped back into the industry, it was as a freelance chef and preparing meals for private clients, and now with two children, she knows it’s important to be a part of those moments.

That doesn’t mean she stopped cooking now that she’s a mom. She’s still private cheffing, and now she’s making wildly creative ice cream flavors that you might come across in Asian countries or in U.S. cities with a strong Asian presence.

Blue jasmine milk tea

White miso vanilla bean swirled with black sesame butter. Pandan cookies & cream. Blue jasmine milk tea.

But Karla’s Kreamery isn’t strictly Asian inspired, it’s seasonal and it’s simply creative in general. She has also teased blueberry crisp (vanilla-blueberry ice cream, homemade wild blueberry jam, oat and brown sugar crisp topping), cereal flavors (Fruity Pebbles, Apple Jacks, Corn Pops), elderberry-hibiscus with homemade blueberry-thyme jam, and a New Orleans-eque café au lait, a swirl of coffee and “true” milk ice creams.

As with every bright idea nowadays, this was all conceived at the beginning of the pandemic.

“I always made ice cream having learned crème anglaise in culinary school,” Sorrentino explains. “I make it for restaurants and for clients. I started making it for myself on a snowy day during the pandemic as I thought about my love for Japan. It’s one of my favorite countries to travel to, cook in, eat the food, and utilize their products. I began thinking of flavors you can’t find here. I wanted kombi kelp ice cream. It’s common in Japan. It’s a little briny, salty, sweet. I wanted it and figured, well, fuck it, I’m a chef, I’m just gonna make it! I spun one pint of it with kelp from off the coast of Hokkaidō. It made me so happy.”

After making kelp ice cream, Sorrentino kept going, making flavors she craved. As to not be on an all ice cream diet and gain weight, she shared with friends and neighbors. Most came back to her with positive feedback and said they liked it so much that they’d pay for pints. “I lacked the time, but I figured it’s a disservice if people are interested in it, and if I believe in it, why not?” she asked herself.

Sorrentino’s next steps from there were to acquire a frozen dessert license and wait a while to get said license. In the meantime, she brainstormed sweet, salty, wild ice cream mashups and did a lot of in-home R&D, teasing flavors on Instagram before she could legally sell cold, creamy, often textured desserts.

When Karla’s Kreamery finally went live, it didn’t take long for pints and half pints to sell out.

Banofee: heilala vanilla ice cream swirled with banana confiture, homemade dulce de leche and pieces of graham cracker pie crust

But don’t let that stop you. There’s a system in place. Follow Karla’s Kreamery on Instagram, and when she announces the two flavors for that month and that pre orders are open, let her know via email what you want. She’ll get back to you with all the necessary next steps, including a meeting place in New Canaan where you can pick up your treats.

As far as what’s churning soon for Karla’s Kreamery, expect seasonal fruit ice cream—even though it’ll undoubtedly be more imaginative than that—and she’s usually about using chocolate, nuts, or seeds in one of the flavors. Sorrentino even mentioned doing at least a monthly pop-up collaboration, one of which has already gone down with Good Old Days Pizza in Newtown, and she’s got others in the works with Sama Yoga Center, Jean Jacobs Gallery, at Nod Hill Brewery with Taproot, Rosina’s, and Flour Water Salt Bread. You’ll have to stayed tuned to her Instagram account for the “WHEN.”

Strawberry rhubarb crisp. Those oats are tossed in hot brown butter.

Sorrentino may even throw up a handful of for sale pints on a first come, first serve basis on Instagram just to get an opinion on a mix as to possibly make it available as a featured future flavor. She did that with pandan cookies & cream, so expect to see that one again.

She also knows that some of these flavors might not be for you right from the jump, but maybe you don’t even know that they are until you try.

“I like to play a lot with sweet and salty,” Sorrentino says. “It could be well made but may not be someone’s cup of tea. I understand that by offering only a few flavors that it might not be for someone. People didn’t know what pandan even was, but they wanted it again. While this is self-serving, I do hope people dig it. Ninety percent have been cool with me offering pints. Some are angry that I don’t have a scoop shop!”

karlaskreamery.com