Coolhaus - the ice cream truck that puts Mr. Softee to shame

On the third Sunday of every month this summer, Prospect Park has been hosting a food truck rally, with some of the city's most loved food trucks congregating in the front of the park near Grand Army Plaza.  This past Sunday I ventured over to Park Slope to see what this rally was all about.

Now, I'm aware of the food truck craze that's taken over the city in the last few years.  I've seen the multitude of Yogo trucks in practically every neighborhood in both Manhattan and Brooklyn.  However, I'm usually a passerby, opting to eat my meals in establishments with a roof and a seat.  But people rave about some of this food truck food, so I had to give it a try.

There are about 28 food trucks that rotate at this monthly event (which will only run through October so be sure to make it there September 16th or October 21st).  This week, after carefully evaluating our options, we decided to give Coolhaus a try.  Coolhaus has a fun concept - creating a custom ice cream sandwich with both unique cookie and ice cream flavors.

The cookies come from Ovenly, who have a store location in Greenpoint and sell their baked goods at numerous location across Brooklyn and Manhattan.  The cookies themselves will receive a separate blog entry, because not only were they amazing but I just added them to my list last week before realizing they were affiliated with Coolhaus!  There are about 60 flavors of ice cream, none of which include your plain old chocolate or vanilla.  Coolhaus offers flavors such as molten chocolate cake, bananas foster, beer & pretzels, and sweet potato & marshmallow.  Here's a full list of flavors for your reference: FLAVORS

The cookies include some classics like double chocolate chip and peanut butter, but also have fun flavors like red velvet, potato chip & butterscotch and snickerdoodle.  There are gluten-free and vegan options too!

On this particular trip, I tried the double chocolate chip cookie with Dirty Mint ice cream (fresh mint ice cream, semisweet chocolate chips & a hint of brown sugar).  For $6, you get a scoop of the ice cream served between two cookies, wrapped in edible calorie-free paper.  The calorie-free paper part actually made me laugh, since the Sammie probably had about 800 calories in itself.  Despite that (hey - today was a gym day!) I LOVED this ice cream sandwich.  The cookies were definitely on the super sweet side, and I shockingly was only able to eat half of the sandwich, but it was well worth every bite.  You could taste how fresh the mint was in the ice cream. The cookies were hard enough to hold the sandwich, but soft enough to be able to easily bite into it.

Coolhaus got it's start back in 2008, when the founders Natasha and Freya began making ice cream and baking cookies in interesting combinations, naming the flavor combos after architects and architectual movements that inspired them.  The girls decided the best way to get their Sammies out to the public was by a food truck, so in 2009 they bought an ice cream truck in LA and showed up at Coachella with their fun flavored sandwiches.  People loved it, word spread, and now you can find Coolhaus trucks in NY, LA, Miami, Austin and Dallas.

For New Yorkers, aside from the food truck, you can find Coolhaus creations in assorted stores throughout Manhattan, Brooklyn and even Citifield (including Brooklyn Fare, the market across the street from my house!)  Although the best way to experience it is prepared fresh with the flavors of your choosing.  Coolhaus can be followed on Twitter and Facebook to find their daily locations.  They also make appearances at different concert venues, including ACL in Austin and the Electric Zoo festival at Randall's Island.

You can follow them on Twitter @Coolhaus.  Or @CoolhausNY.  Or whatever other city you live in that I mentioned above.  But since I don't actually know how to use Twitter, I'm not sure that what I just wrote is correct.  Maybe it involves a hashtag.  Maybe this is easier: www.eatcoolhaus.com

Scratch This On Your Brownie List

The Chocoholic Cjaps have attended the Village Voice Choice Eats tasting event in the past, but unfortunately missed it this year since I was stuck in Austin for work.  The participants are typically very meat-centric, but the VIP tickets include special desserts.  One in particular, Scratchbread, was a participant this year, and we read amazing things about their brownies.  Since we couldn't try it at Choice, I decided the next bike ride through Brooklyn, it was on the hit list.

The owner, Matthew Tilden, started off baking breads in whatever spot he could secure and delivering them to local shops and flea markets in Brooklyn.  In October 2010, he decided to turn Scratchbread into a stand-alone bakery, with only $5,000, with the goal being to produce food that's "delicious, awesome, and not pretentious."  He wants to not only bake from scratch, but use pure ingredients rather than a whole slew of processed ingredients like you'll find in most products in grocery stores.  After about a year of using the space (which used to house a pizzeria) mostly to bake breads, and eventually opening the window once a week to sell to the public.  Now he's able to operate 6 days a week, and people line up to try his baked creations.

Fortunately, when my brother and I decided to meet up for a bike ride to Rockaway, Bed Stuy was a decent meeting point.  Since they were written up for having great bread (namely the focaccia) and breakfast dishes as well as the brownie, so off we went to investigate.

Adam and Pat (guest bloggers of the week) and I ordered our breakfasts - Stumptown ice coffee (one of my favorites), toast with almond butter and vinegared blueberries, and succotash - a small pot of roasted potatoes, corn, and cheese with a soft boiled egg on top.  I was a big fan of the succotash dish, but that can be partly because I've never had it before, and I was famished by 11am when we finally stopped having flat tires, wrong directions and finally made it to the window.  The menu changes daily, allowing for Matt to experiment with different combinations, and cult followers of Scratchbread claim they're never disappointed.  My one negative with Scratchbread was that I wished there were benches to sit on to eat the food.  After reading the background I understand why there are no tables inside, however a bench or two would have been great!

Since it was a hot day, the woman working (who is a volunteer apprentice, working to learn the trade as are all the Scratchbread employees) offered to hold my brownie in the refrigerator while we ate our breakfast, since she said it would definitely melt in the sun.  She pointed to the display, where there had once been a brownie but now just contained the residue of melted chocolate.  I had intended to bring it along on our bike ride and have it as a snack when we got to the beach, but that was a non-option on a 90 degree Friday in August.  So I paid the $3, left it waiting, and came back to give it a try after having our Stumptown and succotash.

The verdict - it wasn't like a typically brownie.  There was a thick layer of buttercream in the middle, with a light spattering of buttercream on top.  This sandwich-type brownie was unique, crispy rather than fudgy, and I can understand why Choice chose them to be in last year's event.  It was delicious, without being too intense.  If there was any more buttercream I could see it overwhelming, but it was the perfect combination.  Adam and Pat agreed, that it was one damn good brownie - even enjoyable at breakfast time.

I would definitely come back here to try their different breads.  The website lists all of the varieties and ingredients (http://www.scratchbread.com/the-goods/the-breads/), and I'll be back to try the focaccia and cracked fennel.

Scratchbread is located at 1069 Bedford Avenue.  The closest train stop is the G train to Bedford/Nostrand Ave.

The hours are:
Monday, Tuesday & Friday - 6:30 am - 3:00 pm
Thursday CLOSED
Wednesday - 6:30 am - 8:00 pm
Saturday & Sunday 10:00 am - 3:00 pm
www.scratchbread.com