Tech-driven ice cream: These Fort Wayne pastry chefs have a 'secret ingredient' for quality, interesting flavors

Stop by Brooklyn Pints Microcreamery at the historic Sheridan Court Apartments in Downtown Fort Wayne, and you're likely to find some obscure flavors of handcrafted artisanal ice cream on the menu.

Alongside traditional options, like Dark Chocolate and Cookies & Cream, you might notice Black Sesame, Blueberry Corn or Honey Ginger. At one point, Co-Owners and partners Brian Therkildsen and Trisha Tran even experimented with Garlic flavored ice cream.

"It sounds gross on its own, but if you put it on a steak, I think it would be good and unique," Therkildsen says.

A Fort Wayne native, he recently returned to the city with Tran, who previously worked in the pastry kitchen of the two Michelin-starred restaurant, the Modern, at New York's Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). The two met prior to that while attending the Culinary Institute of America in New York together, and as their name might suggest, they ended up sharing an apartment in Brooklyn. That's where they first began experimenting with ice cream while laid off from their pastry chef jobs during the pandemic.

"There’s actually a lot of science that goes into making ice cream," says Therkildsen, who wound up building a custom computer program that functions as a calculator to help him and Tran experiment with unique ice cream flavors – all without breaking the bank or compromising the creamy quality of their product.

"It also kind of adds to the secrecy of our recipes," Therkildsen says. "There's no secret ingredient; honestly, we use all very familiar ingredients. It's about the ratios and temperatures."

Since opening Brooklyn Pints about two years ago, Therkildsen and Tran have been voted Best Ice Cream in Fort Wayne in 2022 and were nominated for 2nd place in Reader’s Choice in 2023. They regularly rotate small batches of flavors and always have about eight vegan and gluten free options on the menu, as well as handcrafted vegan and gluten free waffle cones (a must-try).

We sat down with Therkildsen and Tran to learn more about their backgrounds, favorite flavors and tips for your next visit to Brooklyn Pints.

Tell us a little bit about your backgrounds and previous work in the pastry industry.

T: Brian is from Fort Wayne, and I’m from Germantown, Maryland, in Montgomery County area. We both have pastry backgrounds, and we met in culinary school at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. Then we moved to New York together. While there, I worked at the Modern for about two years and other various restaurants, working in pastry.

B: I spent most of my time working at Gramercy Tavern. You might recognize it from the pilot episode of Sex and The City. It was very much “the place to be” in the 1990s, and it’s still one of my favorites. It’s so good.

How did you get into ice cream?

B: We had been thinking about starting an ice cream shop since about 2017, and we attempted to try every ice cream shop that we could in New York, just for fun. But we didn’t experiment with making it ourselves until the pandemic in 2020.

During that time, a lot of people in the restaurant and hospitality industry were laid off, and as a result, many cooks began starting their own apartment-based bakeries or kitchens and marketing their food on Instagram, where anyone could pick it up.  

So that’s how we started experimenting with ice cream in our Brooklyn apartment. We didn’t feel right profiting from it at the time, so we donated most of the profits to various charities and just kept enough to buy ingredients and supplies. For us, it was more about having a learning experience and figuring out what worked and what didn’t. 

What did you learn about the process of making ice cream?

B: There’s actually a lot of science that goes into making ice cream. I’ve spent months in front of my computer, using a program I created and built that’s basically a calculator, where I’m able to plug in numbers and measurements for our ingredients, and it tells me the butterfat percentage, sweetness and even how hard the ice cream will be when frozen. I’m looking for a certain percentage on each number. And you have to keep in mind that sugar doesn’t freeze, so how much sugar is in a recipe affects how well it will freeze at 32 degrees Fahrenheit. 

Making ice cream requires a lot of reading, research and some pretty complicated books. I never thought cream and water could be so interesting, but it ended up being pretty cool to me. Then you get into mixing in fruit, and you have to know how much water is in the fruit and how much natural sugar is the fruit because it affects your numbers. Being able to run numbers on the computer saves a lot of time and money, and it’s allowed us to experiment with a lot of interesting flavors, while maintaining quality.

What are some of the most interesting flavors of ice cream you’ve made?

B: For me, the cool thing about ice cream is you can do so much with it. You can make it sweet or savory. We’ve experimented with some weird flavors, like Garlic ice cream (mentioned above). We’ve also experimented with Sage ice cream, but it got really bitter overnight. We might try to tackle it again later.

T: We did a Miso-Caramel flavor that was more out there. We found a lot of people didn’t know what miso was before trying it. (It’s a fermented soy bean paste typically used in Japanese cooking.) Sometimes we even have trouble getting people to try ice cream with ginger. But that’s why we’re here: to bring out the creativity in Fort Wayne!

What inspired you to move to Fort Wayne and open your shop here?

T: When the pandemic was over, we thought: having a house is probably really nice, and to be honest, we were just over the city scene. So we moved here in 2021, and opened the shop about a year later in 2022. The space kind of fell into our laps, too. We found out through the grapevine that the owners of West Central Microcreamery were closing their business, and the timing was right for them to sell us their equipment. (Brooklyn Pints is a new, separate entity in their former space.)

At the time, West Central Microcreamery was the only local ice cream shop making their own ice cream. Now, it’s us, Local Apple Cart at Union Street Market and GK Baked Goods.

B: We liked the space in West Central at the Sheridan Court apartments, too, because it reminded us of Brooklyn. Our neighborhood there had a lot of historic homes. It was called Ditmas Park, and it looks like a bigger version of West Central with a lot of brownstones and mixed-use spaces with businesses beneath apartments. 

What are some of your favorite things about living in Fort Wayne and owning a business here so far?

T: I really like Fort Wayne because of how community-forward it is. There are a lot of local festivals, and in general, a ton of things to do in the community, and people are very loud about supporting it. 

There’s a lot of art here, too. I’m from the East Coast, and I didn’t feel like I was surrounded by a bunch of artsy people, growing up. It was more lawyers, doctors and government officials. But I feel surrounded by artists here. 

B: I grew up here and left around 2012, so seeing how different Downtown is now really wowed me. I would say the food truck scene alone is what got me to come back. That was we wanted to start with – a small commercial kitchen food truck and do ice cream out of that. Then we found this brick-and-mortar shop.

How is the business going?

T: The first year we opened, we won Best Ice Cream in Fort Wayne in a community vote, and we were nominated for 2nd place in Reader’s Choice in 2023. After only being open a year, we thought it was pretty cool people nominated us.

For me, opening the business itself and keeping it afloat for two years feels like an accomplishment in itself. We have four staff total now. Brian and I make everything, spin everything and run social media and financials. Then we have two employees whose job it is to scoop and maintain the shop when we’re not here. 

What makes Brooklyn Pints unique?

T: A lot of ice cream shops have a lot of candy toppings, but we put so much effort into making the ice cream itself that we want to highlight it more. So we don’t offer any toppings, which puts us in a unique category, and we’ve seen a great response from the community. People seem to enjoy it, and a lot of people who are vegan or have allergies can find something on our menu, too. 

We only have one type of cone, and it’s a gluten free, vegan waffle cone that we make in-house. I really wanted to make something for everyone, so that’s why we only make one variety. Sometimes, people ask us why we don’t have more types of cones, and another part of the reason is because we don’t have space to store them. We’re basically working out of an apartment-sized kitchen in our shop. What you see behind the counter is all the space we have to work, so it’s not very big, and everything is made on-site.

B: We like being able to say we make everything here, too. The only thing on our menu that we don’t make is the Oreos that go into one of our ice creams.

What are your personal favorite ice cream flavors?

B: I love our black sesame ice cream. We don’t make it often because it’s difficult, but it’s really nutty and sweet. It’s actually black, and we don’t add any color to it. We don’t ever add any extracts, oils or food colorings to our ice creams, so everything you see is natural.

T: I love our dark chocolate flavor. It’s so rich. I’ve loved chocolate since I was a kid, and it’s still my go-to dessert.

Tell us more about your vegan flavors. 

B: We try to have at least eight vegan flavors at any given time, mostly because West Central Microcreamery had a lot of vegan flavors, and we knew it was a favorite spot for many people who are vegan, so we wanted to maintain that. When we decided to do it, I had to research how to make vegan ice cream, which required some testing, but it’s actually very good.

There’s a stigma sometimes with vegan stuff that because it’s vegan, it tastes bad. But that was really before there was enough research and recipe testing to accommodate vegan and gluten-free options. Many gluten free and dairy-free products have gotten very good. But I do warn people: vegan ice cream is not going to have an identical creamy texture to dairy ice cream; however, it can get very close. Give it a chance before you write it off completely.

You made some beignets last winter that were popular. Tell us about those.

T: It was the dead of winter, and we were trying to think how we could get people to come out for ice cream because this is our fulltime job. So we decided one day to make beignets, and they blew up online. Our reel went viral. I was like: what in the world is happening? Now, we plan to do beignets about one month every year, starting right after Thanksgiving. Since we’re such a small staff, we’re slowly incorporating pastries and other things like that. But we’re still focused on ice cream. In addition to beignets, we also make ice cream cakes and sandwiches occasionally, which we market on social media.

B: We’ve also done some catering and taken orders for full cakes in the past, but not many. If you’re interested, contact us, and we’ll see what we can do. 

In addition to your shop, where else can people find your products?

T: You can find us with our ice cream trike at the YLNI Barr Street Farmers Market Downtown on Saturdays in the summer. We also do the Junk Ditch Food Truck Rallies occasionally on Tuesday nights once a month. 

Any pro tips for people when they visit your shop the first time?

B: Be opened-minded, and even if you don’t know what something is, just try it. We offer free samples. 

T: Also, because everything is handmade by us, try to be nice. And don’t count on your favorite flavor to be there all the time because we switch out our tubs almost every day. 

B: We only make our ice cream one bucket at a time, so we make really small batches, and when it runs out, it runs out. It’s a three-day process to make ice cream, too, so it’s not something we can quickly restock.

What are your most popular products at the shop?

B: Probably the milk and cookies, London fog, and cinnamon honey ice creams. For vegan flavors, it’s vanilla birthday cake, java chip and chocolate peanut butter. Java chip is my favorite vegan flavor. 

Just for fun: What are some of your favorite places to eat around town?

T: We really like Famous Taco. Banh Mi Pho Shop is also great. I’m Vietnamese, by heritage, so their cooking is like a modern version of my mom’s. 

B: I also love Tolon, Copper Spoon and Penny Drip.

Try it!

This month, The Local is partnering with Brooklyn Pints Microcreamery to bring all paid subscribers one FREE scoop of ice cream (in a bowl). We give our paid members a freebie every month at a local business to cover the cost of membership. See what a paid membership is all about with this 30-day trial, and you can get that scoop of ice cream, too!