salt licorice time!

 

Why are all these people making crazy faces? Well, let me tell you the story of salt licorice hazing! It all started when I worked at Goody's in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Boise, Idaho, the summer after my freshman year of college.

Goody's was your typical ice cream soda fountain/candy shop with jars & jars & jars of candy by the pound, including these little Double Salt Black Licorice pucks. Very few people bought them, but whenever we hired someone new, during the requisite tour of the candy area, the more senior shop employees would have the new kids try this black puck without telling them what it was. (The whole thing was a not-so-sweet form of hazing!) Most people would freak out … but I was like, 'This is delicious!' My bestie in college was an exchange student in Denmark & had this salty black licorice that I would eat all the time.

When our salt licorice ice cream comes out in the spring, I always remember that experience, so we got some molly moon's employees & friends who agreed to be 'hazed'! From left to right & top to bottom: Amanda (our Wallingford shop manager), Brian (one of our Capitol Hill ice cream makers), Eva (a Capitol Hill scooper), Ian (our head chef), Meri (a scooper in Wallingford), Michael Wells (Executive Director of the Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce), me (saying 'What? How come no one else likes this?'), Rafi (an official molly moon's model) and Tucker (one of our U Village scoopers).

Even though these little black pucks inspired our salt licorice ice cream (one of my favorite annual, seasonal flavors), we make the ice cream with organic star anise & the usual recipe of sugar and local milk & cream, so it's sweetly delicious!