Salt & Straw's New Vegan Ice Cream Flavors Are Inspired By Classic Desserts

Salt & Straw's name is a shout-out to old-school ice cream making, according to the Oregon-based handmade ice cream purveyor. The company name speaks to the way the sweet treat was traditionally made, where the salted ice water in which the bucket of sweet cream was churned allowed it to reach colder-than-freezing temperatures (via McGill). And straw was used to pack ice cream to keep it cold in the days before refrigeration, per Twinkl. But there's nothing old school about the direction in which Salt & Straw is currently taking ice cream. 

As The New Antiquarian points out, the first American recipe for ice cream was a blend of cream, sugar, and egg yolks. But Salt & Straw and founders Kim and Tyler Malek, are committed to making good ice cream for everyone — that means not leaving those that follow special diets out in the cold. As the company website claims, it doesn't use eggs in its ice cream. And although sugar is an ice cream non-negotiable for the creative creamery, some of its flavors don't include cream either. 

Indeed, Salt & Straw always has at least three dairy-free varieties on the menu, and 20% of its offerings are vegan-appropriate. More importantly, later this week, Salt & Straw launches five new vegan ice cream flavors, all of them inspired by classic American desserts, its rep informed Tasting Table.

Salt & Straw's policy is to introduce new limited-edition ice cream flavors about every month, according to its website. All are meant to scream decadence, and that includes even the vegetable-flavored ice cream varieties introduced this past summer. These offerings put carrots into Carrot Cake Batter with Pralined Hazelnuts, corn into Charred Corn Curd, Cotija, and Tajin, and spinach into Spinach Cake with Chocolate Tahini Fudge, among others. 

This time around the inspiration is classic American desserts like bananas Foster and red velvet cake. All five of Salt & Straw's new vegan ice cream flavors pay homage to a different classic dessert.

Salt & Straw's new vegan ice creams include Bananas Foster (featuring banana-infused coconut cream-based ice cream swirled with a non-dairy banana purée-infused caramel), Chocolate Sorbet (a rich dark cocoa ganache-based sorbet, enhanced with flaky salt), Toasted Oat Milk & Cookies (featuring a vanilla-cinnamon oat milk-based ice cream studded with chocolate chip cookie chunks and ganache), Peanut Butter Brittle Caramel Fudge (vanilla-flavored coconut cream-based ice cream with a semi-sweet caramel fudge swirl and flecks of peanut butter brittle), and Red Velvet Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting (red velvet batter-infused coconut ice cream with cream cheese-frosted chunks of red velvet cake). These vegan-friendly flavors will be available in-store and for shipping for a limited time — between December 30, 2022, and February 2, 2023.