Icicles

A few days ago, I braved pouring rain and blustery winds to check out the newest ice cream shop offering vegan options in Sacramento. It's not ice cream weather yet, but when a fellow vegan sent me information about Icicles, I had to check it out.

Icicles is a Northern California chain that just opened a Sacramento location on Howe Avenue. They create frozen dessert rolls by pouring liquid onto an ice cold pan and forming it into a rectangle, which can then be cut into pieces and rolled up. They offer three vegan flavors that are fruit-based: raspberry, strawberry lemonade, and mango.

I asked for a combination of the three, which I thought would result in a dish containing three different types of rolls. Instead, they mixed the three flavors together before pouring it onto the frozen pan. Fortunately, the flavors tasted great mixed together. After the rolls were made and placed in the dish, I moved on to the topping station, where I asked for strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, and raspberry syrup. It was a delicious dessert, and I'm sure it will be even more popular when the hot weather returns.

One caveat: the man who made my dessert did a great job of scraping the residue of the previous ice cream roll off the pan, but the disclaimer you see in the ingredient list of many packaged foods probably applies here -- the fruit roll-ups are made on the same equipment as the ice cream, so there may be trace amounts of non-vegan ingredients in your dessert.

Icicles is located at 1431 Howe Avenue, and their phone number is 916-582-5410. Their website address is http://iciclescreamroll.com/, and their Facebook page can be found at https://www.facebook.com/icicles.sacramento/. Icicles is open daily from noon to 10:00 p.m.