For Halloween, Pretty Cool Ice Cream Will Transform Into a Scoop Shop

Before Dana Salls Cree opened Pretty Cool Ice Cream six years ago in Logan Square, she assumed she’d open a scoop shop. As pastry chef at One Off Hospitality Group’s Publican and Blackbird, she became well known for her unique ice cream flavors. She turned that passion into a book, Hello, My Name Is Ice Cream: The Art and Science of the Scoop, published in 2017.

Her plans for a scoop shop changed after a pastry chef friend made machines that make ice cream bars available for sale. Salls Cree found herself attracted to this “new uncharted creative territory.” She turned her attention toward specializing in handmade ice cream bars, ice pops, and other creative cold treats

“I went in thinking I would open a scoop shop that brought the recipes in my book to life and instead I found the door to Pretty Cool,” says Salls Cree.

Halloween presents a unique opportunity for Pretty Cool Ice Cream. Restaurants have embraced Halloween costumes in recent years. Le Bouchon, the beloved Bucktown French restaurant, dressed up as the Olive Garden last year. In 2015, Wieners Circle in Lincoln Park dressed up as McDowell’s, a fictional McDonald’s rip-off featured in the movie Coming to America.

For the holiday, Salls Cree will dress her two pop shops up as scoop shops inspired by her book. On Saturday, October 26, and Sunday, October 27, Salls Cree will fulfill her dream when Pretty Cool’s two locations offer eight flavors of ice cream chosen from recipes in her book. To get into the Halloween spirit, the Pretty Cool employees will be dressing up in Hello My Name Is Ice Cream shirts. Pops will still be available for those two days.

“Every Halloween we rename ourselves something spooky and offer holiday treats, but I always thought it would be cool if the shop itself dressed up in costume,” Salls Cree says. “Well, what does an ice cream shop dress up as? A different ice cream shop.”

While a long time in the making, this isn’t the first time Salls Cree has offered her ice cream for sale. Back when she worked for One Off, she would make a limited series of Hello My Name Is Ice Cream pints and sell them at Publican Quality Meats. The Fulton Market cafe and butcher shop was where a lot of the recipes for her book were developed.

It was also around that time that Salls Cree discovered she had celiac disease, a diagnosis that put her pastry-making career in jeopardy. While she admits she probably always had the disease, it was when she started sharing kitchen space with the company’s bread-making production that her symptoms became intense. “It was the first time I was in the flour cloud that a bread bakery generates and that pushed me over the edge,” she says. There was a silver lining. “It also pushed me into ice cream.”

All the Halloween ice creams are gluten-free as are the cones. Salls Cree and her team sat down with her book to talk about what flavors they wanted to make, focusing on composed scoops — “the real showstoppers,” she says, rather than the single flavor recipes. Once the eight flavors were chosen — mint chocolate chip cookie dough; chocolate peanut butter brownie crunch; gooey butter bake; pumpkin butterscotch pecan; rainbow sherbet; kids play (goat cheese); lemony lemon crème fraiche; and cookies, cookies, and cream — the ingredients were ordered and the team got busy.

The ice cream will be $6 a scoop, and $7 for a split scoop. Anything left over from the 5,000-scoop production will be available for sale in pints at the shops. Salls Cree’s award-winning book will also be available for sale.

“As much I love everything that we make, I miss making scooped ice cream so much,” says Salls Cree. “There’s this whole world of flavors and textures that I developed and have worked with that we don’t get to dabble in because we don’t do scooped ice cream. This is our chance to bring some of that into our repertoire even if it’s just for a short period of time.”

And should there be enough public demand, well, Salls Cree isn’t opposed to the idea of a scoop shop that’s open throughout the year, not just on Halloween.

Pretty Cool Ice Cream Halloween scoop shop pop-up, Saturday, October 26; and Sunday, October 27 at 2353 N. California Avenue in Logan Square and 709 W. Belden Avenue in Lincoln Park.