Find Your Happy Place at High Point Creamery

It’s a story as old as time – New York actress becomes car dealership owner which flows naturally into making ice cream for a living. We’ve heard it again and again, haven’t we? Wait, no we haven’t! Can you imagine meeting Erika Thomas at a cocktail party, casually asking her what she does and what brought her to Denver and hearing THAT story?

Indeed, Erika was an actress working in New York, living with her director/producer husband, Chad Stutz (they met when he cast her in a show). They were going along “doing the artist’s life,” as Erika describes it. Then Erika’s father passed away and she inherited his car dealership in Ohio. That big life transition didn’t go that well. Running a car dealership was not what Erika wanted to do with her life. She sold the business and pondered what to do next.

Erika got into making ice cream when she became known for bringing her homemade treat to monthly themed dinner parties with friends. She tried making ice creams that fit the theme of the meal and really enjoyed doing it as much as her friends loved eating it. Her husband said “You should do this. You’re good at it. People like it. It’s a happy business and if we’re going to throw all of our energy into one thing, it should be happy.” Erika agreed. “I said ‘You’re right, what’s happier than ice cream?’ It’s hard to have a bad day in an ice cream shop.”

The couple has been working on the creation of High Point Creamery (HPC) for a couple of years, including a move to Denver just over a year ago. They wanted to live and start the business in a place that had a reasonable cost of living, was walkable and was a foodie town. “There are a lot of interesting restaurants and a lot of people trying new things,” says Erika.

While raising two young kids, a 19-month-old girl and 3-year-old boy, Erika has been working on different combinations of ice cream and determining what she wanted the shop to look like, what the culture would be and what the “experience” would be. “Everything from a marble table that is a luxurious thing to sit at, to pretty flowers on the table, to how the ice cream tastes. It’s all part of the experience,” she says. Erika chose the Hilltop neighborhood location because there are a lot of kids, near parks, schools, synagogues, churches and.restaurants (Park Burger is next door).

HPC’s ice cream carries with it the higher prices of all things artisanal, made with high-quality ingredients. The base of all of the ice creams is organic cream, sugar, tapioca syrup and tapioca starch. This is considered the American style, absent of eggs used to make custard style. Then, the other actual flavors are added to that base, including six pounds of strawberries in every bucket of her strawberry flavor. “Because we use natural ingredients, it’s a more delicate flavor and the eggs would just muddle them. So we get brighter flavors without the eggs,” explains Erika. The ice cream definitely has a “cleaner,” less coated feel which goes right along with how Erika comes to her final flavor profiles.

Sometimes the inspiration for HPC’s ice cream flavors starts with something complicated that then gets paired down. Erika recalls an early attempt to make a deconstructed basil pesto ice cream. “I made it with parmesan shavings and pine nuts” she says. “It was disgusting. Really awful.” But she liked the basil ice cream and looked for something sweet to put with it. Blackberries happened to be available at the farmer’s market so Basil with Blackberry Swirl was born (and was our absolute favorite when we tried it.) Her Lemongrass Coconut Ginger flavor started as a very bad attempt to capture the essence of green curry sauce which Erika loves. “So I worked on it and it was, again, disgusting,” she says, laughing. “My husband said ‘this is literally awful'” Undeterred, Erika broke down the flavors to what she describes as a clean combination. Some flavors come from memories like the chocolate orange candy that breaks into slices, a yearly Christmas treat from Erika’s mother. Other available flavors include Cilantro with Orange Marmalade, Earl Grey with Shortbread Cookies and for more traditional tastes, Vanilla Bean, Bananas with Honey and Darkest Chocolate.

Although customers can combine any flavors they want, Erika and her staff will also help guide people toward combinations that enhance each other, via suggestions and testers. The ice cream Flights are a great way to try five different ice cream flavors. Set in chic little dishes on a custom-made wooden tray, you get a homemade sauce and interesting toppings such as Italian cherries and candied orange peel, depending on the flavors chosen. For $9 it’s a great deal (especially compared to other restaurant dessert portions and prices.) The flight is ideal for sharing between two or three people. “Those are inspired by beer and wine flights where you get tastes of different things,” says Erika. “It’s a great way to experience different flavors and share.”

In addition to the ice cream Flights, and unique ice cream flavors, HPC also sells Bombes, layered ice cream desserts formed in old-fashioned copper molds, intended to be sliced for parties. Customers are sent home with sauce and toppings for the finishing touch. The shop also serves pour-over coffee from Sweet Bloom Coffee Roasters and various specialty sodas.

Erika has high hopes for High Country Creamery. “I wanted to create a place in the neighborhood where people could have a date, get a cup of coffee and dessert; a place where they could come after the T-ball and soccer and synagogue or church and just have a great place for their family to come. I’m hoping it will be a place where people will have happy memories.”

High Point Creamery is located at 215 S. Holly Street, just north of Alameda Avenue in Denver.