The Scream – 3/1996

Well, here we are, six months after launching our project – The Hot Spot, launching another venture – The Hot Spot Newsletter.  We thought that as the newspapers never publish our letters, we might as well start a newsletter and see the response to it.  I think it will be fun and give us and you the chance to rant and rave about a whole range of things.  This being the first issue, our content is probably not as diverse as we would like, but if some of you are interested in contributing, we could do with the help.  It’s a start, and hopefully, we’ll improve as we go along, and we may even start producing something witty, intelligent, informative and fun to read.  It’s just an idea but interesting, and we intend to make a fist of it.  The second idea that we are floating around is the formation of a movie club.  For more details on that, see the article on the film club.

The Birth of the Hot Spot.

How did we ever get around to making homemade ice cream?  Well, we spent a lot of time abroad – mainly in England and the USA: and one of the things one gets used to there, especially if you live in a student town, is the pleasure of being able to walk into a cafe and enjoy a delicious snack and soak in a wonderfully relaxed atmosphere.  What Islamabad lacks is a cafe and a cafe with a bit of character.  That’s what we wanted to aim for.  A bit on the lines of Pop Tate’s from The Archie Comics our generation grew up reading—an ice cream cafe buzzing with good tunes and good friends making memories.  Now somewhere in between, ice cream became our central theme.  I think it all started when in England, my brother brought home a small ice cream maker (another weapon in his arsenal of things to combat the ongoing war against calories!).  So we began our experimentation.  With Haagen Dazs and Ben and Jerry’s firmly nestled in our fridge, we knew our ice cream would have to be good to make it worthwhile.
The first step was to get a Book on ice cream, and our local library provided us with what we now refer to as the Ice-Cream Bible (We keep it under lock and key).  It had all the information that we required.  Not just recipes but the theory behind ice cream making.  Still, can we make ice cream rivalling the best in the market?  Having been through the Bible and several other books, we understood that for real ice cream connoisseurs, nothing could beat the taste and texture of homemade ice cream.  So we decided that that would be our focus – to produce homemade, traditional ice cream.  Did it tum out well?  We were overjoyed with the results and quite proud as well.  Ice cream making at home became a regular part of our parties and dinners.

When we moved to Pakistan, we decided that ice cream was the way forward to our cafe.  But would it be possible to make ice cream which rivalled our earlier homemade successes?  Our first few attempts were disastrous.  The ice cream wouldn’t harden, and we felt that the ingredients in Pakistan gave our ice cream a different taste.  It was back to the thawing board.  After much experimentation and ice cream batches, we felt we had progressed enough to start our pilot project.  The recipes had been modified, and we were now happy with our product.
Being huge fans of ice cream, we have had our fair share of ice cream abroad, and we aimed to produce ice cream comparable to Haagen Dazs or Ben and Jerry’s.  Similarly, our target customer would be the person who knows his ice cream, who has had good ice cream before, and, as a result, who knows what good ice cream is.  Making homemade ice cream does have its advantages over the commercial brand, which is one of the reasons why we have decided to stick to the most traditional method of making ice cream.  In the commercial arena, one has a wide range of artificial flavours, additives, preservatives, colourings, sweeteners, etc.  Commercial ice cream manufacturers pump air into their ice cream during freezing.  Some air is essential to ice cream, but the more air you put, the foamier the ice cream.  It also means that in any single scoop, you have a certain amount of air and a

A certain amount of cream.  Baskin Robins, a well-known American brand, incorporates as much as 50% air into its ice cream, meaning it is I/3rd air.  Haagen Dazs and Ben and Jerry’s have broken new ground in ice cream making.  They are what are classified as Super Premium ice creams.  They incorporate only 20% air, meaning you get more ice cream and less air for your money.  Homemade ice cream has even less air than this, making it the richest ice cream.  The next time you try a commercial brand, see if the texture is fluffy or snowy or if the ice cream tastes bland.  If it does, you can be sure you’re eating more air than cream.  Anyway, we felt that as long as we got our recipes right, we could produce the richest ice cream around.  In addition, we decided to make ice cream, most traditionally using a wooden bucket and a hand crank.  This method produces the best-textured ice cream possible.  We did have a soft scoop machine, and we did try using it but found that the texture was not comparable to our hand cranks’.  It was abandoned as a result.  We’ll stick to old-fashioned methods.  This occasionally means that we struggle to produce enough ice cream, and some flavours do run out periodically, but we feel that it is better to run out of ice cream than to mass produce sub-standard stuff.

Returning to our humble beginnings, we started our pilot project to test whether the locals would appreciate our ice cream, it was a bit iffy as we were not really offering traditional flavours, and most of our ice cream was very different to what was normally served in these parts.  The chocolate was dark.  The pistachio wasn’t a parrot green colour, and the strawberry wasn’t bright pink.  We wanted to stick to our principle that no artificial material would be used, including colourings.  The ice cream would be coloured by whatever was in it.

By the way, ice cream making has become even more expensive than it should be ……the number of clothes that were ruined by chocolate stains and mango stains is incredible.  My favourite jeans still have splashes of mango on them.

Ice cream making is a Filthy Business!

Anyway, our first customer hated our ice cream.  Our frozen yoghurt was too tangy for young taste buds.  But slowly and surely, things started picking up, and demand grew.  We tried to keep up, furiously cranking away often till 2-3 in the morning.  Life became very hectic – a thought fairly alien for those used to the more sedate Islamabad lifestyle.  We didn’t do any publicity, relying on word of mouth rather than a loud advertising campaign.  It worked…no advertising is better than a personal recommendation.  Seeing several cars parked outside the house enjoying their ice-creams was and still is very exciting.

However, as the crowds have grown, so has our commitment that our ice cream remains at the standard we have set ourselves.  We want to improve further, and presently, we are trying to get some elusive ingredients from Dubai to make more flavours.  We are very clear about one thing – what must never happen is to fall into the trap of producing a good product and then letting things slip.  Please pull us up if you feel we are not adhering to our principles.

There is still a lot that we want to do.  We want to consolidate -diversify our range of flavours, add a few more specialities and ensure that when you come to the Hot Spot for something, you go home feeling satisfied.

Our Hot Spot cafe is still in the works.  We have all our decorations and furnishings ready, and we’re keeping them under wraps so that when we open our joint, you can be sure that it will be like nothing else!

All we need now is a place.  But rents in Islamabad are astronomical, and we don’t have any money as usual.  We had no capital to back us up when we started our ice cream venture.  Everything made through the ice cream returned to get more supplies and equipment.  We still cannot save money, but the ice cream venture has taken off.  There have been turbulent weather, like when all our machines decided to break down on the same day or when our hand mixer started administering electric shocks to all who handled it.  Most recently, we – have had our backs to the Wall(s).  The arrival of Walls did lead to a dip in our sales, but things have picked up again, and the faithful are returning.

So as the weather heats up, things look bright, and we at the Hot Spot would like to take this opportunity to thank all our regular customers for making the Hot Spot possible.  Thanks