The Only Way to Satisfy Your Avocado Toast Obsession? A Scoop of This
Posted by Lindsay Funston on
For our Student Inventor Series, we turn over the flavor creation to the 4th graders themselves. Lana B. from Ms. Jill’s Class at Larchmont Charter in L.A. bestowed upon us the honor of creating her Avocado Toast Surpreme flavor.
Lana’s Ingredients:
Avocado ice cream with avocado chunks
Salt
Pepper
Bread bits, crusts optional
Per Lana's submission, she wanted us to start with a vanilla base sans vanilla, add avocado chunks, sprinkle in s&p, drop in some bread chunks, and mix it up. To mimic avocado toast, we wanted to keep this one straight-forward and on the savory side.
But sometimes the simplest concepts are the toughest to execute.
Given the minimalist ingredients and “Surpreme” denotation, we needed the highest-quality components. Our R&D techs started with ripe Hass avocado pulp. We all know good avocado toast has a generous sprinkling of flaky salt, so we turned to selmelier Mark Bitterman’s signature Guatemalan fleur de sel (the same stuff you love in Sea Salt w/ Caramel Ribbons). Then we played around with various acids, fats, and bittering agents—lemon juice, lime, olive oil, avocado oil—and eventually landed on sour cream, which gave us the tartness we wanted without a guacamole vibe.
For the "toast", we're honored to partner with epic Bay Area bakery Tartine, who believe better grains make for better flour which makes for better bread. They proposed that we use their rustic sourdough-like Country Bread, which has a mildly tangy open crumb and crisp, blistered crust. So the kitchen sliced 175-ish loaves into cubes, coated them in an elmusion of brown butter and Arbequina olive oil mixed with sugar, salt, and pepper, then candied them in the oven to achieve an impenetrable crunch.
Lastly, there was the matter of style. We used a modest use of milk, so smaller amount of butterfat in the sherbet, which allowed the strongest avocado character to shine through while still imparting a beautiful silky and creamy texture. This flavor was one of our favorites to create yet. You’re the toast of the town, Lana!
Lana’s Ingredients:
Avocado ice cream with avocado chunks
Salt
Pepper
Bread bits, crusts optional
Per Lana's submission, she wanted us to start with a vanilla base sans vanilla, add avocado chunks, sprinkle in s&p, drop in some bread chunks, and mix it up. To mimic avocado toast, we wanted to keep this one straight-forward and on the savory side.
But sometimes the simplest concepts are the toughest to execute.
Given the minimalist ingredients and “Surpreme” denotation, we needed the highest-quality components. Our R&D techs started with ripe Hass avocado pulp. We all know good avocado toast has a generous sprinkling of flaky salt, so we turned to selmelier Mark Bitterman’s signature Guatemalan fleur de sel (the same stuff you love in Sea Salt w/ Caramel Ribbons). Then we played around with various acids, fats, and bittering agents—lemon juice, lime, olive oil, avocado oil—and eventually landed on sour cream, which gave us the tartness we wanted without a guacamole vibe.
For the "toast", we're honored to partner with epic Bay Area bakery Tartine, who believe better grains make for better flour which makes for better bread. They proposed that we use their rustic sourdough-like Country Bread, which has a mildly tangy open crumb and crisp, blistered crust. So the kitchen sliced 175-ish loaves into cubes, coated them in an elmusion of brown butter and Arbequina olive oil mixed with sugar, salt, and pepper, then candied them in the oven to achieve an impenetrable crunch.
Lastly, there was the matter of style. We used a modest use of milk, so smaller amount of butterfat in the sherbet, which allowed the strongest avocado character to shine through while still imparting a beautiful silky and creamy texture. This flavor was one of our favorites to create yet. You’re the toast of the town, Lana!