4 minute read
I Scream, You Scream, at Auntie RaRa’s Ice Cream Truck
I Scream, You Scream, at Auntie RaRa’s Ice Cream Truck
By Ali Patusky
Rachelle Windle, owner of Auntie RaRa’s Handcrafted Ice Cream, has always had a “creative mind.”
She studied photography at Virginia Commonwealth University and owned her own photography business before, with the help of a friend, she discovered her favorite form of art— making ice cream. Thank you Brian Jenkins, owner of the Tipped Cow Creamery in Purcellville, her hometown.
“I got the opportunity to work for a friend who randomly decided to open an ice cream shop, and he just threw me all in,” Rachelle said. “He showed me the basics of how to make ice cream, and then kinda just let me run with it. And I loved it.”
Following this experience, she started to pursue the possibility of opening her own ice cream business, drawing inspiration for the name and logo from her niece and nephew, who call her “Auntie RaRa”.
“The picture of my logo is actually me holding my nephew when I worked at the other shop, and he’s an ice cream fiend,” she said. “I just need to add my niece now to the logo.”
Still, it did not go exactly as plannned. Several weeks after she quit her job, the Covid pandemic essentially shut down the area. The good news? It gave Rachelle time to find and purchase an essential tool for the business– an ice cream truck.
“We were driving towards Fredericksburg, and we saw a guy who had three ice cream trucks,” she said. “We stopped by, and he was like ‘hey, I’ll sell you one’, so it worked out really well.”
The trial run came in the fall of 2020 and Rachelle has been “going ever since,” traveling Northern Virginia and selling her handmade ice cream out of the truck, hand-dipped scoops at a time.
A typical week usually includes making ice cream on Tuesday or Thursday, or “both depending on how busy it is”, and then selling it Wednesday through Sunday. Then she “does it all over again” every week, stopping only during the winter season. Creating new flavors and “fooling around in the kitchen” is “hands down” her favorite part of running the business.
“I’ll just walk through the grocery store and see a cereal or some random thing and be like ‘what can I do with this?’ and then I’ll get in here and try it out,” she said. “I can make something up, and if it fails, I scratch it...It’s an art form.”
Her best-selling flavors of vanilla, chocolate, and cookies and cream are always available at the truck, while the other three flavors offered change routinely as she experiments in the kitchen. No matter the flavor, her secret to a creamy and delicious ice cream is all about the quality of ingredients.
“I make mine with 14 percent milk fat which makes it really creamy,” she said. “A lot of places, I’d say, use 10 percent.”
Her customers confirm this quality. One woman, enjoying her ice cream recently at the Buchanan Hall Farmers Market in Upperville, smiled and said, “We get some every time we come.”
The truck can be found most Wednesdays at Buchanan Hall. She also takes it to private parties, athletic and other events around Northern Virginia. In the future, she hopes to add a storefront to the business, but for now, she’s happy to have found her passion.
“I never expected to own an ice cream truck,” she said. “And then, I finally found, at the ripe old age of 34, what I really wanted to do.”
