As part of its Holiday Cookie Exchange Collection, Clementine’s Ice Cream teamed up with a group of six diverse content creators, chefs and entrepreneurs in developing a cookie ice cream flavor collaboration that is personal to them and how they celebrate this time of year. All six flavors are available in scoops at Clementine’s parlors until Dec. 31 and in pints while supplies last. (And don’t miss our recent podcast epidsode with Clementine’s founder Tamara Keefe.)
Reine Keis // Thick Mint
Reine Keis has owned and operated Sweet Art Bake Shop and Cafe in St. Louis since December 2008. Though it began as a vegan-vegetarian shop, during the pandemic, Keis transformed the menu into a fully vegan menu. In 2021, Sweet Art was featured on the Netflix show Fresh Fried and Crispy that featured their Zora Neale Hurston sandwich, a twist on a Buffalo chicken sandwich, but made with pea protein instead of chicken. As a vegan herself, Keis’s goal is to change the stigma on how vegan food is viewed.
Keis’s cookie ice cream flavor is Thick Mint and is the only non-dairy option out of all six flavors. It is inspired by the thick mink cookies sold in Sweet Art’s annual holiday cookie box. Though different from the rest of the selections, her enthusiasm about the flavor speaks to the high quality.
“Most people frown at anything that is vegan, or plant-based, and we’re really good at it, because we don’t want people complaining. We don’t want anyone to ever say it’s good for vegan, it’s just good period,” Keis said.
Justine Doiron // Sticky Toffee Pudding
Home cook, New York Times best-selling cookbook author and social media content creator Justine Doiron did not initially set out to pursue a career in social media content creation. However, when the pandemic hit, she decided to start posting cooking videos online. Now, in 2025, her account, @justine_snacks has accumulated more than 3 million followers across Instagram and TikTok. Originally from St. Louis, Doiron is now based in New York City, where she shares recipe videos filmed from her kitchen.
The success of her social media accounts jolted the opportunity to turn her recipes into a cookbook. In Justine Cooks, Doiron features mostly plant-centered recipes that encourage readers to think outside of the box in the kitchen. Her Clementine’s ice cream collaboration flavor, Sticky Toffee Pudding, is taken from her cookbook. Though, instead of including dates in the recipe, Doiron swaps in pears.
“It’s bits of pear cake in the butterscotch ice cream blend that they have. It’s my dream flavor, Jimmy Fallon has Tonight Dough, I have sticky toffee pudding. In terms of the cookie swap mentality, we did cookie swaps as a kid, but we never really chose the cookie, so our holiday desserts tend to be the cakes or pies. Those are what stuck out to me as a kid,” Doiron said.
Anna Gordon // Cranberry Vanilla Linzer
Anna Gordon grew up in a household surrounded by a lot of open mindedness around food and the ability to be creative in the kitchen. This mentality led her down the path to attend pastry school in New York City and then begin selling her baked goods at the Brooklyn Flea. In 2014, Gordon and her husband, Steven Hartong, opened up The Good Batch Bakery’s flagship kitchen and bakeshop in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. At the bakeshop they serve two main purposes. Along with stocking their front of house with baked goods centered around American nostalgia, The Good Batch also distributes to around 250 small businesses around the five boroughs.
Gordon originally connected with Clementine’s owner, Tamara Keefe through the James Beard Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership program in 2020 and continued to maintain the friendship. When Keefe reached out to include Gordon in this year’s holiday selection, Gordon wanted to include the Cranberry Vanilla Linzer cookie served at her bakeshop.
“It’s a nod to a traditional Linzer cookie, dressed up for the holidays. We chose it because of the bright and natural color of the cranberries. I think the cranberry is an uncommon flavor in an ice cream palette. The cranberry balances really nicely with the sweet cream, ending in a really balanced bite,” Gordon said.
Megan Garrelts // 7 Layer Bar
Growing up in the Chicago suburbs, Megan Garrelts always held an inclination that she was going to become pastry chef. After high school, she attended The Culinary Institute of America where she earned a baking and pastry degree. From there she began her career working at restaurants across the country, including Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Chicago, before relocating to her husband’s hometown of Kansas City. With her husband, Colby Garrelts, the team opened up their first restaurant called Bluestem, a fine dining establishment. The success from their first business prompted them to write a cookbook and win multiple James Beard Awards for Best Chef: Midwest. Then in 2012, the team opened up Rye to pay homage to their roots by offering midwestern comfort food.
When asked what cookie to feature for Clementine’s Holiday Cookie Exchange, Garrelts knew immediately what she wanted to include. She chose to feature the 7 Layer Bar, a familiar family recipe that her mom made growing up.
“My mom’s seven-layer bar is definitely the family cookie that we’ve all looked forward to during the holidays. It came from that and it’s an easy cookie to make. It’s easy to chop up and fold into an ice cream, so it just made sense,” Garrelts said. “Butterscotch is my favorite flavor, and the seven-layer bar has a butterscotch chip in it. I used my mom’s cookie recipe, and then my butterscotch sauce recipe, and then we incorporated it with Tamara’s ice cream base.”
Fany Gerson // Chipotle-Cherry Rugelach
A Mexico City native, Fany Gerson holds an extensive resume as a chef, cookbook author, teacher and entrepreneur. Growing up, Gerson was always artistically inclined. Though she received some hesitance from her family at first, she proved her success through attending The Culinary Institute of America. Throughout her career, Gerson has gone on to write three cookbooks and open up three businesses with her husband, Daniel Ortiz De Montellano. Together they own Fan Fan Donuts, Mijo and La Newyorkina.
When choosing a cookie for the cookie exchange, Gerson wanted to pay homage to her Mexican-Jewish heritage with a Chipotle-Cherry Rugelach flavor. She noted that moving to New York City helped her discover her Jewish identity more, and whenever she felt homesick, she would make her grandmother’s Rugelach recipe to help alleviate those feelings.
“When I moved to New York, through food I started exploring my Jewish roots, and the intersection between my Jewish and Mexican heritage. For many years, I started to do these special Rugelach. In my grandmother’s house, we had these Rugelachs, but they weren’t made with the traditional dough … but when I tried them when I moved to New York, I started to explore how can I make these my own,” Gerson said.
Abi Balingit // Pandan Polvoron Raspberry Cheesecake Cookie
At just 29 years old Abi Balingit won her first James Beard Award for her cookbook, Mayumu about Filipino-American desserts. Though she has earned this high achievement, Balingit does not bake and develop recipes full time. Since she was 13 years old, Balingit has been obsessed with baking. It was during the pandemic that everything shifted for Balingit, when she started posting baking content on her Instagram account, The Dusky Kitchen, outside of her full time job working in music tech. From there, an agent contacted her about pursuing a cookbook deal and Balingit took a leap of faith on the adventure. It was this leap of faith that opened up future opportunities in the baking industry while she continues to balance her full time job.
Balingit is Filipino American and notes that her culture influences a lot of the flavors that she pulls from when developing recipes. When choosing her Clementine’s flavor, it was important for Balingit to pull flavors from her culture into the selection while keeping it colorful for the holiday time. After curating, she ended up with a Pandan Polvoron Raspberry Cheesecake Cookie flavor.
“I grew up with coconut flavors and ube, and pandan and all these things are very much on a different side of the world from here. It was definitely a fun play of all the different flavors I could pull from to create all these fun recipes. It’s definitely a range, you don’t have to go to culinary school, like I didn’t either, to create and execute all these recipes,” Balingit said.