Regarding Allergens and Restricted Diets

Here at Pretty Cool Ice Cream we strive to make something for everyone. This means we have many pops with limited ingredient lists, but we also process all kinds of ingredients as well. We work to keep our equipment sanitized between uses, and take care to keep allergens isolated, but cannot guarantee cross contamination won’t occur. We feel the largest risk of cross contamination lies with dairy, eggs, peanuts and tree nuts. 

However it is best to know all our pops are made in a facility that also processes dairy, eggs, soy, peanuts, and tree nuts. 

Gluten and Wheat

Because our founder Dana Cree is intolerant to wheat, we only use gluten free products to make all the bars for our shop menu. The graham crackers in our pie pops, chocolate cookie crumbs in our grasshopper bar, gingersnaps in our holiday bar, donuts in the donut flavored pops, and vanilla wafers used occasionally in special bars all come from Kinnickinnick Bakery, a certified gluten free facility. We use Snyders Gluten Free Pretzels for our Coffee Pretzel Toffee pop.

We have found a new source for crispy rice pearls that does not contain any wheat products, and have reintroduced pops like Caramel Horchata Crunch to our case!

Collaboration Flavors

We no longer produce collaborative flavors unless we can use gluten free products to make the pops.

Ice Cream Sandwiches

The cookies for our ice cream sandwiches are made in our own shop, with gluten free ingredients and in a completely gluten free environment.

Peanuts and Tree Nuts

We have a few flavors that include peanut butter, and we use shared equipment to process our ice cream. While we have many pops on our menu that are made without peanuts, cross contact may occur. 

The Pie Flavored Plant Pops we occasionally make includes almond in the shell. We use a product from Valrhona Chocolate that replaces the dairy product in white chocolate with almond making it a plant based product. While the pops in the Bang Bang Pie Pops family are nut free with white chocolate in the shell, the plant based version is not. 

On occasion we will use almond milk in one of our Plant Pops for flavor. We will list “almond” in the title if we do so.

The toffee we use in our Coffee Pretzel Toffee bar contains almonds. We are actively looking for a product without almonds, but this warning will remain in place until we find one.

Eggs

We use three different recipes to make our dairy based pops. A Philadelphia style recipe made with cream and milk, a sherbet style recipe made with cream, milk, and buttermilk, and a custard style ice cream made with cream, milk, and eggs. There are many pops that people who can’t safely consume eggs can enjoy, but all our custard bars include egg, as well as the Key Lime Piecicle, the Banana Cream Piecicle, the Vanilla Pony Pop, the Chocolate Pony Pop, and the occasional Fancy Pop. The gluten free bakery products we purchase do not contain egg.

Soy

The Chocolates we use include soy lecithin as an emulsifier, and the gluten free bakery products we buy include soy as an ingredient. 

Our Thai Tea Plant Pop uses soy milk in the recipe for flavor.

Puppy Pops

We make pops for your pups to safely enjoy from all natural tahini made from sesame seeds, fresh bananas, and water. A reminder that while many of us know dogs can’t eat chocolate, they also can’t tolerate the caffeine in the Thai Tea Plant Pop, the Litchi Lemon Truck Pop, or the real concord grapes we use to make our Grape Truck Pop.

Vegan

We have two families of pops we make without any animal products. The Truck Pops are water based pops, and the Plant Pops are creamy ice cream style bars made with coconut milk. We have discontinued the use of refined white sugar and purchase a beet sugar processed locally that is vegan.

Many of the sprinkles in our collection are polished with shellac. Shellac is a food grade all natural waxy substance used to give shine and gloss to different products. It is collected from the Lac Beatle, making it unsuitable for many who eat Vegan diets. Because of this we restrict the sprinkles we use on our Plant Pops to only those polished with carnauba wax. 

On occasion products are dyed with an all natural red coloring made from Cochineal, an insect that lives on cactus plants in Mexico. Because of this we avoid adding anything with Cochineal coloring to our Plant Pops or Truck Pops. 

Honey is used to flavor some of our pops but intentionally excluded from the Truck Pop and Plant Pop collections.  

No Sugar Added

We have a Pony Pop made by freezing apple cider from Klug Farms. While apple cider contains natural sugars of its own, we do not add any additional sugar to this pop, making it a preferred treat for some of our youngest guests and people who restrict sugar from their diets.

Keto Pops

We have had many requests for a pop that fits within the restrictions on the Keto diet and are unable to accommodate these requests. Sugar is not just sweet, it also impacts the freezing point of ice cream and pops, and without it we have not yet been able to make a product we are proud to serve.

Alcohol

We have made a decision to exclude alcoholic beverages from all our products, and won’t be offering any beer, wine, or spirit based flavors on our menu. However, many of our extracts include alcohol, including our Bourbon Vanilla Bean and any pop with Vanilla added for flavor. If you choose to fully abstain from ingesting any amount of alcohol, please call the shop at 773-697-4140 or ask at our counter which pops in the case contain alcohol based extracts.

Vegetarians

We use two ingredients that may not be suitable for vegetarians, gelatin and confectioners glaze. Gelatin is an ingredient in the mini marshmallows that decorate some of our pops, and we toast gelatin based marshmallows that are blended into the ice cream for toasted marshmallow flavored pops. Confectioners glaze contains Shellac, sometimes excluded from Vegetarian diets. It is used to polish some sprinkles and sparkly sugar that we use to decorate our pops. We exclude anything with confectioners glaze from our Plant Pops, but our dairy based pops contain sprinkles with confectioners glaze.