Dana Rengel sells vanilla ice cream at her new food cart Blondie’s Ice Cream, but she doesn’t have chocolate. Not strawberry either.
Instead, Rengel innovates fun flavors — twists on childhood desserts and hard-to-find flavors like sweet potato pie, orange creamsicle and vegan snickerdoodle.
“Ice cream is so nostalgic for a lot of people. I think hitting on those nostalgic flavors, like creamsicle, that you maybe don’t see as often is a huge selling point,” she says. “You may not see chocolate (on the Blondie’s menu), but you’ll see chocolate in elements of other flavors. You might think, I really enjoyed butterscotch as a kid, maybe I’ll try the butterscotch bourbon.
“I think it pushes people to get something outside of their comfort zone,” Rengel says.
It’s also a matter of space — Blondie’s Ice Cream, owned by Rengel and her partner Tim Hart, operates out of a tiny recently-renovated 1973 horse trailer. There’s only space for six flavors, so Rengel wants to showcase the special ones.
Blondie’s was born out a pandemic hobby when Rengel lived in Portland, Oregon. With an ice cream machine and all the time in the world, Rengel started dabbling in the kitchen — a space she’s not unfamiliar with.
Blondie’s Ice Cream’s Dana Rengel makes nostalgic flavors, like sweet potato pie and a peanut butter and cookie flavor inspired by “The Parent Trap.”
By trade, Rengel is a pastry chef. She was able to use her pastry knowledge to get started on the fundamentals of the ice cream machine, followed by books that taught her more.
“I just kinda fell deeply in love with it,” she says. “It’s kinda the perfect blank canvas to do your magic.”
Though Rengel still experiments a lot, it took about three months for her to perfect her methods. There’s a lot of research and development — and a lot of trial and error — that happens behind the doors of Decibel Coffee Works, where Rengel works as the bakery manager (and where you can also find her ice cream).
“I’m really dedicated to being happy with what I’m putting out,” she says. “It passes my bar first.”
For now, you can find Blondie’s Ice Cream at events around town (or for catering), set up in the cutest orange trailer you may ever see. When Rengel bought it in Portland, it had been sitting in the same spot for about a decade.
“Tim used to outfit camper vans, so he pretty much applied everything he learned there for our cart,” she says. “We tore it apart, cleaned out literal horse crap from it and put it together. I couldn’t be happier with it. He did such a stupid good job with it.
“It’s nostalgic — that’s the word I keep coming back to,” she says. “It’s bright and happy.”
Blondie’s Ice Cream operates out of a 1973 horse trailer that owners Dana Rengel and Tim Hart renovated.
One big bonus: the trailer doesn’t need any electrical hookups. It runs entirely on solar, thanks to Hart.
“We haven’t done an event in almost a month and it’s sitting in my driveway running on Arizona sun power,” Rengel says. “My freezer is cold, my water heater works.”
Rengel’s ice creams are also sold at Decibel, 267 S. Avenida del Convento in the MSA Annex, with a slightly different menu than the one you'll find at Blondie’s. There, the ice cream is available for your affogato or by the scoop in classics like chocolate and vanilla, plus a Tucson take on rainbow sherbet (hint: it has prickly pear in it).
So far, the fan favorite at Decibel is the rainbow sherbet, a flavor meant to rotate but has been so popular that it’s been a semi-permanent edition. The Parent Trap, sold at Blondie’s, is also popular. It's inspired by Lindsay Lohan’s characters in the movie “The Parent Trap” — who eat their Oreos with peanut butter.
“We did our first event and we were saying, this is actually a double name, because kids will see the description of it and say, 'I have to get that one!' So it’s like trapping the parents into buying a scoop of ice cream,” Rengel says.
Rengel’s current favorite flavor is lemon meringue, with its pucker from the sour cream and the lemon curd she can eat alone with a spoon. It’s currently on rotation at Decibel.
Blondie's Ice Cream serves six ice cream flavors out of a retro horse trailer. Pictured is Orange Vanilla Creamsicle.
“I’m a dessert-aholic,” Rengel says. “I’m a dessert person through and through so I like to play this mental game of: how can I transfer this into a dessert?”
She likes to gather around the table with her pastry friends back in Portland, talking about flavors, inviting feedback on how she could improve. One she’s trying to perfect right now — root beer.
“I did a couple renditions of a root beer flavor and we would sit around and be like, ‘This tastes too much like corn syrup,’ or ‘This one doesn’t have the sparkle,’” she says.
“It’s my white whale at the moment.”
To keep up with Blondie's Ice Cream and see where they'll be next, check out their Instagram page. Decibel Coffee Works, 267 S. Avenida del Convento, is open 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday-Tuesday, 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday.
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Watch now: #ThisIsTucson's food writer wraps up 2022 by reflecting on her 10 favorite foods and food trends of the year.
