Karl Heinz does not hesitate when he names the strangest ingredient he has used in his exotic ice creams.
Ice cream with exotic fruits
The asparagus ice cream sounds odd as do the requests from customers for wasabi, brown bread and pineapple curry flavours.
But the cigar ice cream wins the prize as weirdest.
No matter how unusual, the German ice-cream maker, who moved to Dubai four years ago, will make any flavour from scratch on demand.
And so when Dubai Marine Beach Resort & Spa called to order the tobacco leaf-flavoured dessert four months ago, he said yes.
“They asked for a cigar ice cream for a themed dinner held for the launch of a cigar in their hotel. Not my taste, but I did it,” he says.
Mr Heinz bought a bunch of Cohiba cigars and cut them into tiny pieces.
Cigar ice cream
He added them to his basic ice cream mix of milk, sugar, cream and a stabiliser that helps give the ice cream a better texture and then strained the concoction to maintain the cigar aroma.
“Every day I come up with new flavours. Hotels need special flavours for special menus for their functions so I send them samples after I taste it myself.”
As a chef with 25 years’ experience, Mr Heinz has become an expert. He owns a hotel in Germany where he started his ice-cream business – but in Europe, he says, homemade ice cream is “commonplace”.
Karl Heinz, a German ice cream maker living in Dubai, makes wacky flavours on demand, with 25 years’ experience behind his Empire Ice Cream factory.
“I bring in vanilla sticks from Madagascar, 200kg of frozen fruits a day from France, mangos from India and chocolate from Belgium,” he says. “It’s better quality and it’s fresh.”
He makes more than 100 flavours at his Empire Ice Cream premises in Ras al Khor, with no minimum order or time restraints.
“Some customers have asked me to incorporate gold in the ice cream, which has to be done by hand, and that costs about Dh260 a litre,” he says.
