Dana Cree has spent her career asking questions most pastry chefs never think to ask. Why does brown sugar make ice cream icier? What is bubblegum actually made of? Can a green bean casserole taste incredible as a frozen pop? The answers led her from restaurant kitchens across three continents to Penn State's Ice Cream Short Course, a James Beard-nominated book, and Pretty Cool Ice Cream, the Logan Square shop and ice cream pop brand she has been running for eight years.

Dana grew up in the Pacific Northwest with a grandmother who was a home ec teacher. Weekends meant turning the crank on the apple peeler and standing on a stool to learn pie crust. She fell in love with pastry the moment she spotted the words "pastry chef" on a dessert menu at a restaurant her father helped build on a Seattle pier. She went to culinary school, transferred into the new pastry program when it opened, and spent the next two decades working in some of the most celebrated kitchens in the world, including The Fat Duck, Noma, avec, and Blackbird, where she considers her work a magnum opus.

The idea for Pretty Cool came not from a business plan but from a road trip. After testing an ice cream bar machine at a friend's restaurant in St. Louis, Dana drove back to Chicago with the entire concept fully formed. She opened a Kickstarter, typed "My name is Dana Cree and I make pretty cool ice cream" as her introduction, saw the name, opened GoDaddy, bought the domain, and one year later opened the doors in Logan Square. The shop is 100 percent gluten-free, the result of Dana developing Celiac disease and no longer being able to eat what she was making.

Pretty Cool now has a new production facility that opens up wholesale, catering, festivals, and a future second Chicago storefront. The pops ship nationally through Lou Malnati's Tastes of Chicago platform. The holiday menu has included a green bean casserole pop that a food writer once said should have Dana's palate insured, alongside Thanksgiving sides, savory Super Bowl collections, and breakfast ice cream day specials that won the Idaho Potatoes campaign.

What we cover:

• Growing up in the Pacific Northwest with a home ec grandmother and first lessons in pie crust, canning, and applesauce
• Spotting "pastry chef" on a dessert menu as a kid and knowing immediately that was the job
• Building a career wide rather than climbing straight up: Poppy in Seattle, The Fat Duck, Noma, avec, and Blackbird, and why the lesser-known restaurants were often the ones where she did her best work
• What it actually means to be a pastry chef: being a chameleon, punctuating someone else's meal, and why Dana finds that the most creatively exciting constraint
• The bubblegum dessert at Blackbird: how you reconstruct a fantasy flavor that does not exist in nature using banana, lemon, orange, and vanilla
• The Pacojet that broke every one of her recipes and sent her down a 10-year rabbit hole into the science of ice cream
• Penn State Ice Cream Short Course, also known as ice cream college, and writing "Hello, My Name Is Ice Cream: The Art and Science of the Scoop"
• The road trip from St. Louis where the entire Pretty Cool concept was born, and how the name came from the first sentence of a Kickstarter form
• Opening in Logan Square, the soft opening where a neighbor started yelling "free ice cream" on the corner, and the pandemic year that followed
• Why the bar and pop format beats a scoop for texture, and how quiescent freezing makes vegan ice cream actually work
• Developing Celiac disease mid-career and building Pretty Cool as a 100 percent gluten-free company, including the beetle shellac detail in most commercial sprinkles
• Third wave ice cream: where Jeni's, Salt & Straw, Kith, and Pretty Cool fit, and the new classics that used to sound wacky (salted caramel, honey lavender, strawberry balsamic)
• The holiday and seasonal menu: green bean casserole, Thanksgiving sides, the Idaho Potatoes campaign win, and why Pretty Cool's best creative work happens in colder months
• The pastry garden: lemon verbena, apple mint, chocolate mint, cinnamon basil, hardy kiwis, and elderflowers grown from European stock because the American ones just taste like flowers
• Consulting work abroad and Max's Best Ice Cream in Bethesda, Maryland, where she helped design a menu with Best Buddies to create real, meaningful jobs for people with intellectual disabilities
• Advice for entrepreneurs: brace yourself, understand the honeymoon period, and plan your exit before you plan your entry
• Why Dana did not put her name on her business, and what it means to keep your identity separate from what you build

Find Dana and Pretty Cool Ice Cream at prettycoolicecream.com and on Instagram at @prettycoolicecream. Visit in person at California and Fullerton in the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago. Order for national shipping through Lou Malnati's Tastes of Chicago.

This episode is sponsored by Vermont Nut Free Chocolates. Get 20% off your order through December 31st with code PERFECTBITE at vermontnutfree.com.

This episode is also sponsored by BLiS Gourmet, Michigan's small-batch producer of barrel-aged condiments, sauces, and caviar. Elevate your everyday cooking at blisgourmet.com. Get 15% off your order with code PERFECTBITE through November 8th at blisgourmet.com.

This episode is also sponsored by Takeaways. Indulge your salt tooth with Takeaways' cheesy, protein-packed snack bars. Get 20% off with code PERFECTBITE at eattakeaways.com.

This episode is also sponsored by Hej Hej. Treat yourself to imported Swedish candy mixes and experience the Swedish tradition of slowing down for a sweet treat. Get 10% off your order with code SWEET at chefhejhej.com.

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