Blank Slate Creamery
Janice Sigler left the University of Michigan Alumni Association to churn ice cream on W. Liberty, and she sets her base with eggs instead of carrageenan or guar gum.1
Why go
Sigler opened on 6 July 2014 after weeks of round-the-clock churning.1 The milk is Guernsey Farms out of Northville, hormone-free, and Sigler churns her twenty-some flavors of ice cream and sorbet in the shop. She makes the fruit and fudge toppings, the waffle cones, the cookies and the brownies there too.1 The eggs are what slows the making down: We use eggs for an emulsifier, instead of carrageenan or guar gum,
Sigler says, and the eggs mean every batch has to go through an exacting, time-consuming pasteurization.1 Her brother Chris Munson, a carpenter, did the build-out. Her father wired the light fixtures out of her mother's antique Mason jars.1
Order this / avoid
- Order: the butter pecan. Sigler builds it on brown sugar for
a little bit of a burnt molasses taste.
1 - Avoid: the Jackson Road door if you came for a cone. It sells pints and novelties, nothing scooped.2
What locals & experts say
- Ann Arbor Observer:
Not only are Sigler's twenty-some flavors of ice cream and sorbet made in-house, so are the fruit and fudge toppings, the waffle cones, the cookies, and the brownies.
1 - Janice Sigler, on the comparison with a hundred-year-old parlor:
Well, a hundred years ago, they didn't have the machines I have.
1
Good to know
- Hours: Sunday to Thursday noon to 10pm, Friday and Saturday noon to 11pm.2
- Three doors: Liberty is the one on the list. Brighton keeps its own hours and Jackson Road is carry-out.2
- The corner: Julian Moody's Applerose natural food grocery held this site from 1973 until 1994.1
Jeff's take (his words)
- Note: "Creative and inventive ice cream" The invention he means starts in the base, and the eggs are why a scoop costs what it costs.
Verdict
could-visit — Sigler builds the base on eggs and skips the gums, which is the whole argument for paying ice cream prices in a town with a dozen freezers. The milk comes from one Northville dairy and the cones, cookies, brownies and fruit toppings are made in the same kitchen. Against that sits a twelve-year gap in the written record, so what is documented is the method and not today's scoop. A current read by somebody who ate there this summer would move it up.