While most of us were perfecting a loaf of banana bread or tending to a sourdough starter while stuck at home during the COVID-19 shutdown, Katie Glover turned to her favorite vice: ice cream.
Glover, a part-time Cutchogue resident who teaches English to seventh- and eighth-graders in Manhattan, was looking for a creative outlet during the summer of 2020, as she was unable to tutor or work with children.
“My whole life, I’ve always been into cooking and ice cream in general. As a kid, we’d always make it as a family,” Glover said. She began experimenting with her small kitchen appliance, mixing up different flavors that would result in about two pints of ice cream.
“I would make it on Sunday and it would be gone by Tuesday,” Glover said. “And my husband was like, you’ve got to get rid of this.”
Thus, the North Spoon Creamery was born.
The name is a playful nod to the region’s moniker, where Glover has spent the last 20 or so summers with her family. Earlier this spring, she upgraded her home machine to a semi-commercial one and has kept busy, sometimes making over a dozen pints each week.
Though she doesn’t have a brick-and-mortar ice cream shop, Glover began offering pints and mini six-ounce containers of her creations for sale at the end of June with pop-up stands near Pequash Beach.
Most weekends, you can find Glover on a shaded corner with a small cooler full of flavors, like rainbow cookie, farm donut, lemon or coffee stracciatella, blended into a dairy milk base.
She sources all of her add-ins from local businesses and farms. The farm donut, which is Glover’s personal favorite, uses doughnuts from nearby Wickham’s Farm. Other flavors have incorporated Wickham’s fruit, strawberries from Patty’s Berries and Bunches and coffee beans from North Fork Roasting Company.
“It’s happiness. It’s cool to see people walking by in the neighborhood and being like ‘What is that?,’” she said. “Some people are immediately, no-questions-asked like, ‘Oh yes, I want some.’”
She also gets a ton of community feedback, noting that there’s a big demand for rum raisin. A large share of her customers are beachgoers, people walking or bicycling through the active neighborhood — and even a regular UPS driver in search of a cold treat on a hot summer day.
“It’s definitely a fun hobby. It puts a smile on people’s faces,” said Glover, 30. “I feel like this is my childhood dream come true.”
Everyone, of course, loves ice cream, but Glover feels an even sweeter connection to the popular treat, recalling how her grandfather, after retiring from a career in the NYPD, operated an ice cream truck for years.
“Good humor style, all those favorites,” she said. “So maybe it’s in my blood.”
Follow @northspooncreamery on Instagram for a behind the scenes look, plus updates on when and where ice cream will be available.
