Inside the kitchen where a new Durham company is freeze-drying dairy-free ice cream
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- What should I know? Musician and former Durham City Council member Pierce Freelon has a new venture.
- What should I share with family and friends? The coconut-based dessert is freeze-dried, good for people who are lactose intolerant, that comes to life in your mouth.
Pierce Freelon knows “melt in your mouth” is a cliche.
But there’s no better way to describe what happens when consuming his newest concoction. The freeze-drying process, he says, concentrates the flavor, and when the water rehydrating the bite-size scoops comes from your own mouth, well…
“Something magical happens,” Freelon said. “It dissolves as soon as it touches your tongue.”
The “it” is the Durham multi-hyphenate’s latest venture: Coco Fro, a vegan twist on freeze-dried ice cream. It’s made with coconut cream and coconut milk, so it’s plant-based and entirely dairy free.
It’s the texture of a meringue, or the marshmallows in Lucky Charms cereal, “but as soon as it hits your tongue, it tastes like ice cream,” Freelon said.
The concept crowd-funded more than $25,000 on Kickstarter this spring, money that Freelon hopes will propel Coco Fro to the next level.
Vanilla, chocolate, strawberry & sweet potato pie
Pierce Freelon and his son Justice, 15, arrived at Piedmont commercial kitchen in Hillsborough early, before 8:30 a.m., trying to beat the mid-morning rush on a Tuesday in early June. They washed their hands and gloved up as ice clattered into a bin nearby.
After clicking on the freeze-dryer and taking care of some prep work, they passed the 30 minutes it takes for the machinery to warm up by applying stickers with their logo to small metallic baggies.
Then, the father-son pair stepped into a bedroom-size freezer to transfer the ice cream bites — which had frozen overnight — onto small rectangular metal trays.
Their breath was visible, and Justice wrung his hands trying to dislodge the cold after the job was done.
Chocolate was their focus, to supply a weekend bar mitzvah. It’s Justice’s favorite flavor of the two they’ve already mastered; the other is vanilla cardamom.
“Strawberry is next on our list. Sweet potato pie will be after that,” Freelon said.
The sweet potato pie, he said, will rely heavily on his mom’s recipe, which he said makes “Thanksgiving miracles happen in your mouth.”
“I would like matcha a lot,” Justice added.
Plant-based and Afrofuturist
Freelon first tried freeze-dried ice cream when he was a kid, purchased at Durham’s Museum of Life and Science gift shop.
“I used to gobble this stuff up,” he recalled.
But he’s 40 now, and less willing to battle his lactose intolerance when vegan alternatives are available. His kids are now the ones clamoring for the freeze-dried, mint-chocolate chip on their museum visits, so he began looking for an alternative to satisfy his own cravings.
“I searched for it, and there’s really nothing,” Freelon said.
In the U.S., lactose intolerance is most common among African Americans, American Indians, Asian Americans and Hispanics. Knowing all this planted a seed, Freelon said.
Freelon is an artist whose children’s music was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2021. He’s taught, written picture books, produced podcasts and dabbled in local politics, serving briefly on the Durham City Council.
Much of his energy these days had been spent on Blackspace, a place for teens to create and learn that is rooted in Afrofuturism, and part of the revenue from Coco Fro will support the endeavor.
“This is so in alignment with the things I do,” he said of Coco Fro. “I consider this one of my art forms.”
“Coco” represents the coconut cream foundational to the product. “Fro” takes on a dual meaning. One, it’s frozen and two, it’s Afrofuturist.
Freelon defines Afrofuturism as “a way of looking at the future through a Black cultural lens.”
He said the money gathered through the Kickstarter, which came from 168 backers, will help scale up Coco Fro’s operations. They’ll buy a bigger freeze-dryer, upgrade their packaging, work on marketing and advertising, and launch an online store.
Anywhere freeze-dried ice cream is sold, they’d like to be.
“There are 181 planetariums and space museums in the country. We want to be in every one,” Freelon said.
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This story was originally published July 8, 2024 at 2:58 PM.
