Create your own ice cream flavor at this New Jersey shop
At Beenie’s Ice Cream in Morristown, guests can customize their own ice cream tubs with mix-ins, swirls and more.
- Customizable ice cream, two chicken caesar dishes and more most impressed food writer Kara VanDooijeweert this week.
- This column publishes on Saturdays, and typically features standout eats from Morris, Essex, Bergen, Hudson, Passaic and/or Sussex Counties.
My 21 year-old sister Erika thinks baby showers are the most boring thing ever.
And — with their generic Italian food, dull diaper games and 45(+) minutes dedicated to watching the future mom open gifts — she’s kind of right.
Last month, at one of our cousin’s child-welcoming celebration, I noticed her eyes drifting as she poked an overcooked piece of chicken francese with a fork.
“At least at weddings,” she said, “There’s alcohol.”
Later, we broke up the monotony with a trip to the bathroom. While washing our hands, she looked at me through the mirror.
“You better not throw me a baby shower,” she demanded. “Or, at least make it interesting.”
I turned to where she was standing.
“Girl,” I said, “I’m having your baby shower in an escape room on your due date.”
Here are four things I ate this week as exciting as giving birth in a time crunch.
Carrot Cake Pancakes, Marley’s Junior
Driving to the depths of Warren County is hardly a chore when dessert disguised as breakfast is waiting on the other side.
A sinkhole on my route? Didn’t notice.
106.7 Lite FM turned to static after Washington Township? It only plays MJ, Madonna and FuturHealth weight loss ads, anyways.
Make it 50 minutes west, and you’ll end up at Marley’s Junior, a 235 year-old converted hotel oasis whose decadent brunch dishes make sitting patiently in silence for 38 miles worth it.
Case in point: the Bugs Bunny (carrot cake) Pancakes.
Loaded with buttery walnuts and topped with house-made cream cheese frosting, the moist flapjacks taste somewhere between melt-in-your-mouth cupcakes and a buttermilk “Flavor of the Month” at IHOP.
Go: 746 Route 57, Port Murray; 908-269-8106, marleysjr.com.
‘Kara’s Triple Cookie Crave,’ Beenie’s Ice Cream
What’s more exciting than an escape room? Inventing your own ice cream flavor — which guests can do weekly at Beenie’s in Morristown.
Offered on the shop’s website as a “Custom Flavor” option, the create-it-yourself gallon (or 2.5 gallon “big tub”) is the latest item to hit the shop’s unique menu.
Taking advantage of the opportunity to totally blow this concept up on Instagram, I visited the store to tape owners Tony and Andrea Franco whipping up a custom flavor from scratch.
When I requested my tub to feature a cookies and cream base with Golden Oreos, cookie dough and a peanut butter swirl, however, the result was so delicious the couple added it to the display case as a “One Batch Wonder” — and it sold out in less than 48 hours.
(To design your own ice cream flavor, visit us.orderspoon.com/beeniesicecream).
Go: 38 Morris St., Morristown; 862-260-9221, beeniesicecream.com.
Chicken Milanese Caesar, Bar Mutz
Is it a giant chicken caesar cutlet? Or an upside-down chicken caesar salad?
The world may never know.
Go: 90 Center Ave., Westwood; barmutz.com.
Chicken Caesar Biscuit, Tonydoms
Another dish I invented recently (though it may not be named after me), this is inarguably a chicken caesar biscuit.
Or, perhaps, a savory chicken caesar Oreo.
Go: 529 Morris Ave., Summit; 908-472-0187, tonydoms.com.
Hungry for more?
Want more on this week’s latest food news? Check out some of my (and others’) best articles at NorthJersey.com/food.
Until next week, eaters.
Here’s hoping you don’t get caught at a baby shower without AirPods, salt and an apple juice box of chardonnay.
Kara VanDooijeweert is a food writer for NorthJersey.com and The Record. If you can’t find her in Jersey’s best restaurants, she’s probably off running a race course in the mountains. Catch her on Instagram: @karanicolev & @northjerseyeats, and sign up for her North Jersey Eats newsletter.
