Before Bonnie Plottner opened her Woodinville ice cream shop, Swanky Scoop, in April 2022, she sold ice cream by the pint as a pop-up. She rolled out creative flavors, like the Cookie Monster — a spirulina-tinted vanilla with chocolate chip cookies, cookie dough and Oreos — and the Grizzler, a corn ice cream made with chunks of masa cookies and a ribbon of Woodinville Sauce Co.’s blackberry hickory barbecue sauce.
But the most important flavor in Plottner’s shop is the vanilla.
“People feel bad about getting vanilla,” she said. “But vanilla is awesome! This one is award-winning.”
Vanilla isn’t the top-selling flavor at Swanky Scoop — since opening, Plottner has scooped through 370 tubs of vanilla compared with 1,060 tubs of the Cookie Monster flavor — but it’s the ice cream shop’s key ingredient.
If your go-to ice cream order reflects your personality, you may be reluctant to go with such a “basic” scoop. But at this Woodinville scoop shop, the vanilla is a worthy flavor on its own merit, as well as the base for many other inventive flavors.
And, as of last year, the ice cream is a blue ribbon winner.
Here’s how Plottner refined the recipe for her vanilla — and why she’s so passionate about it.
Perfecting the recipe
For a flavor that is often used as a synonym for “boring,” vanilla is actually quite complex.
“Vanilla has 300 different aspects to its flavor components,” Plottner said, “and the way the flavor is extracted matters as well.”
You can tell a lot about vanilla ice cream just by looking at it. Using artificial vanilla will give the finished product a brownish tone. French vanilla is often yellow because of egg yolks in the base. Scraping the vanilla bean itself yields a vanilla with those classic little speckles.
“The flavor isn’t in the seeds,” Plottner explained, “it’s in the gooey part of the vanilla pod.”
When tasting a vanilla ice cream, Plottner said that subtlety is a good thing. Anything that seems to hit you over the head with that vanilla flavor most likely comes from vanillin, a synthetic flavor derived from bark.
Truly, not all vanillas are made equal. Ice cream makers must choose between hundreds of vanilla flavor blends when creating their own recipe.
Plottner has been working to perfect the Swanky Scoop vanilla blend since she took an ice cream course in Wisconsin in January 2020. The pandemic hit and Plottner put plans for an ice cream shop on the back burner, launching instead as a pop-up. In May 2021, Plottner leaned on Swanky Scoop customers to choose a champion vanilla: One week, she sold three different vanillas and asked people to vote for their favorite.
The winner was Vanilla No. 3, as it’s known behind the counter, and it was Plottner’s favorite, too: a combination of three unique vanillas working in harmony.
The blend starts with three varieties of cold-extracted Nielsen-Massey vanilla. The Madagascar bourbon is a classic, everyday vanilla, while the Tahitian variety is lighter and more floral. Mexican vanilla is stronger, with a kick of spice.
“You get the Tahitian first and Mexican last,” Plottner said. The ice cream is a cool, creamy white and has a light, almost floral finish. “It’s a flavor that lingers pleasantly. It’s not just a burst of flavor and then gone.”
A better base
When it comes to vanilla ice cream, it’s all about “mastering the basics,” Plottner said. A great vanilla can stand on its own — but it’s also the building block for other flavors and a good indicator of a shop’s overall quality.
That is, much like ordering a classic Margherita pie at a pizza shop, ordering a scoop of vanilla can tell you a lot about what to expect from an ice cream shop.
“If you don’t have a good vanilla, then how reliable is your taste sensor for other flavors?” Plottner said. “It also shows our attention to detail. We’re not just phoning it in, we’re putting effort behind every single flavor.”
At Swanky Scoop, the vaunted vanilla ice cream serves as a base and even plays a starring role in many flavors. The Cookie Monster is one example, and the vegan Cookies and Dreams is another — it starts with a coconut-based vanilla ice cream, as does the Malty and Salty, which combines Indonesian vanilla with malt and salt.
Vanilla extract does a lot of heavy lifting at Swanky Scoop, too. There’s even vanilla extract in the chocolate ice cream. Plottner explained that if a flavor feels flat, it often helps to add a dash of vanilla. Tahitian vanilla especially, with its floral notes, is a staple of fruit-flavored and coffee-flavored ice creams and sorbets.
“It’s expensive, but it’s the underpinning for lots of flavors,” Plottner said.
It makes sense, then, that vanilla is a go-to flavor for floats and shakes. It’s also the flavor people reach for when pairing an ice cream with cake, pie or even cookies. But Swanky Scoop’s vanilla proved last year that it can be the star of the show, too.
Winning the ribbon
“I think vanilla is the king of all flavors,” said Steve Christensen, executive director for the North American Ice Cream Association. “It’s such a beautiful canvas to build other menu items on.”
At NAICA’s annual trade show in 2023, Conecon, Swanky Scoop received a blue ribbon for its vanilla ice cream, an award given to 20 vanilla flavors last year. The ribbon was doled out based on color, texture, flavor and more, all judged by a panel of sensory specialists from Cornell University.
Christensen warns against dismissing an ice cream shop’s vanilla flavor as something simple; in reality, as Plottner has proved, making a top-tier vanilla is a complex puzzle. At NAICA, they take ice cream just as seriously.
“We get in there, listen to the music, smell the waffle cones, sit down for our ice cream and then leave,” Christensen said, describing the ribbon-judging experience. His group takes note of “the blood, sweat, tears, finances and resources that go into that experience.”
Judges have already started their research for this year’s competition, with nearly 100 vanillas submitted from ice cream shops across the country. The judges are also looking at chocolate and strawberry flavors.
As for Plottner, taking Vanilla No. 3 to Conecon in 2023 and winning a blue ribbon was a total confidence boost. It proved that she had crafted something better than your regular ol’ vanilla.
“We get a lot of comments from people who say, ‘Oh, you wouldn’t think vanilla would be good,’” Plottner said, “‘But looks like yours is excellent.’”
