Ice Cream From Scratch

Most shops, including those that advertise "homemade", don't formulate their own base. They buy a pre-pasteurized, commercial mix from an industrial dairy plant and pour it into a batch freezer. The result is sold as "homemade," a term with no legal definition, unlike "USDA Organic" or "Fair Trade." We think you can taste the difference between that and the real thing, and that your body can feel it.

Laz's is one of the rare creameries licensed by the NYS Department of Agriculture & Markets as a dairy processor to vat-pasteurize its own mix in-house. We don't know of another creamery doing this.

Every batch begins with formulating our own base from whole ingredients: fresh cream and milk from regenerative Hudson Valley farms, raw wildflower honey from Catskills beekeepers - our only sweetener - and pasture-raised eggs we crack and separate by hand, which act as our natural emulsifier the way custard makers have done it for centuries. Our extracts are made in-house by a certified herbalist (that’s Laz), with premium organic botanicals macerated in the finest base spirits we can find. Each batch is vat-pasteurized, aged, and churned on-site. No gums, no synthetic stabilizers, no preservatives. Nothing you couldn't find in a very well-stocked home kitchen.

The brand was inspired by the philosophy that flavor and nutrition rise and fall together. Better farming builds better soil; better soil grows richer pasture and more vibrant plants; and everything raised on them - the milk, the honey, the herbs - carries that vitality into the scoop. Flavor is what nutrition tastes like.

Our Story

Lawrence "Laz" DeSimone is a proud FDNY Lieutenant by day and a curious herbalist by night. During his firehouse tours, Laz became known for sharing homemade teas, tinctures, and nutritional supplements, small acts of care to help his fellow firefighters manage stress and stay well on the job.

He found his way to herbalism through the first apothecary he ever walked into, a place that felt like the potion shops from his childhood video games made real: something for vitality, something for clarity, something for fortitude.

His love for ice cream was inherited. His mom worked at a Carvel as a teenager and loved it enough to get an ice cream cone tattoo. Laz loved ice cream too, but noticed how it made him feel afterward: heavy, cloudy, done for the day. The treat was working against the person eating it. So he set out to make an ice cream he loved that didn't make him feel worse.

Before the creamery, Laz spent two years moonlighting as a line cook, while working as a civil engineer by day, in restaurants founded by Chef Daniel Boulud and Chef Vikas Khanna. He earned his master's in Sustainability and Urban Planning and completed his herbalist apprenticeship with Sacred Vibes Apothecary in 2020. He lives in upstate New York with his wife, a climate journalist, and together they share a deep commitment to nourishing people and the planet.