Rabia Kamara is on a bankroll .
Less than a year ago, the Virginia Commonwealth University calibrate opened her beginning brick-and-mortar ice cream parlor in Richmond ’ s North Side. It was November — not the best time of class to sell frozen treats — and the in-between of the pandemic, when many other restaurants were closing for adept. Yet opening day saw her patronize, Ruby Scoops, with a line of customers wrapped around the block .
immediately, Kamara is going neck and neck with five colleague frosting skim innovators in a national contest to create the following flavor for Ben & Jerry ’ s.
On “ Clash of the Cones, ” which filmed earlier this summer and premiered Aug. 16 on the Food Network, the contestants are first charged with resurrecting a “ dearly de-pinted ” classical from Ben & Jerry ‘s Flavor Graveyard. That was the comfortable part. They then were tasked with impressing the judges and limited guest Kevin Bacon by creating a new flavor on the spot, based on the actor ’ sulfur likes and dislikes and featuring no more than six ingredients .
actually, that separate was easy, besides, Kamara said .
“ As internal-combustion engine skim makers, our minds are always kind of churning out ideas, ” she said. “ any clock that I got a immediate, my genius would automatically start to roll and think of different ideas. I have always been trying to trust my instinct as I ‘ve grown up, to go with my intestine. … As things moved forward, I was like, I can in truth do whatever I want and I should take advantage of that. ”
But what was challenging and the “ least fun, ” she said, was trying to make frost skim outdoors in the Vermont heat .
“ It was wildly hot, ” Kamara said. “ It ‘s hard to make ice cream when everything around you is in truth hot. ”
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Kamara wound up winning that first episode with a banana-dark chocolate-and-peanut butter-inspired flavor. In addition to Bacon, celebrity guests on the four-episode first season include rapper/actor Ludacris and Food Network stars Buddy Valastro and Duff Goldman. One dissenter is eliminated each sequence until three stay. The finalists have an opportunity to impress the ultimate ice cream connoisseur, Ben & Jerry ’ s co-founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, creators of such confections as Half Baked, The Tonight Dough and New York Super Fudge Chunk .
“ Being able to be a part of this contest and being able to experience it as a rival was a huge consider, ” Kamara said. “ And getting to meet my competitors and seeing how other frost skim minds work — because we all made such vastly unlike things. And that was in truth cool because I ‘ve kind of been living in my own ice cream bubble. … thus to meet five other people that besides make ice cream, that all make internal-combustion engine cream differently, that all have different philosophies of what they enjoy about what they do, that was actually cool. ”
Ruby Scoops, at 120 W. Brookland Park Blvd., is overt Wednesday through Friday from 3 to 8 post meridiem and Saturday and Sunday from 1 to 8 post meridiem New episodes of “ Clash of the Cones ” air Mondays at 9 post meridiem EST on Food Network and discovery+ .
