- 2 days ago
Cajou represents the joy of choosing, preparing and eating real food, made from scratch. They reimagine ice cream as a healthy treat. Cajou consists of a chef with more than a decade of culinary expertise, topped with a public health attorney, swirled with two ice-cream loving kids and sprinkled with lots of love. Cajou is committed to making ice cream better, using real ingredients that are responsibly sourced. They are proud to offer our Pints of Joy from their hearts to your home and hope to change the ice cream game, one spoonful at a time. One love!
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00So if you are just tuning in, I am Noni Donovan, host of Shop Essence Live in partnership with
00:07the New Voices family. We have such an incredible brand that we are about to bring up right now,
00:13Cashew Creamery. Now, if you have a lot of dietary restrictions in your household, like me,
00:20I got somebody that's gluten-free. I got somebody that's dairy-free. I got somebody that just like
00:24wants everything to be delicious. They have checked so many boxes for us. So I am excited
00:29to introduce you guys to Nicole Foster and co-founder Dwight Campbell of Cashew Creamery.
00:38Hey guys. Hi. How are you? I am so excited. So I've had your ice cream hidden in my freezer in my
00:50garage because if my three kids found it, it would all be gone. But I'm so excited to dig into all
00:57these incredible flavors that you guys have. Before I do that, I'd love for you guys to tell
01:02us a little bit about your entrepreneurial story and how you got started with this great brand.
01:10Well, we are Nicole and Dwight. We started this maybe five years ago. But prior to that,
01:21we were making ice cream. Listen, we had a child who was born premature. And so he was born four
01:29months early and he was in the NICU. The NICU was giving him dairy ice cream. And we were like
01:37watching him. He was getting sick.
01:39I was like, well, that's different. The NICU was giving him dairy formula. And so we were watching
01:49him get sick. And so I had a background in plant-based. I was a raw vegan at one point,
01:55a raw vegan chef. And I was like, you know, I think that it could be the milk. So we tried a dairy-free
02:03milk formula and found that he thrived. So now we know we have a life. We're in the dairy-free
02:09world, right? Our kids are lactose intolerant. So we looked at the market for dairy-free ice cream.
02:15And we were shocked at what we found. We found all of the dairy-free ice cream that we looked at
02:22had really synthetic ingredients. They had artificial tastes, textures, and ingredients.
02:27And we just didn't feel comfortable feeding that to our kids. And then also we found that
02:32the flavors were very boring. They had flavors like caramel crunch and chocolate and vanilla.
02:40And it's like, how many more of those could we have? We're from the West Indies. And there was
02:46really nothing that represented our Caribbean heritage or anybody else's culture for that
02:50matter. And we were like, we can do better. That's how we started.
02:55Oh, so good. Dwight, you got anything to add before I move on?
02:58Um, Kaju is all about community, right? So one of the things that we wanted was to
03:06create flavors that showed all the people that are in our community, whether it's Caribbean,
03:15whether it's, um, African, Middle Eastern, Indian, you know, all the people of color that are not
03:23represented on the shelves. So, so good. Kaju was born. Kaju and thank you. Now, when we get into
03:32these flavors, y'all will understand what they're talking about. They have such a unique variety.
03:39Some flavors I've never heard of being put into ice cream. So I'm very excited to try them. Um,
03:45we're going to do a live trying taste test. So be on this journey with me. And if y'all experience FOMO,
03:52all you got to do is click on the link and order so that you can experience it too. All right. What's
03:57the first flavor you guys want, uh, want to highlight? Well, um, let's say, let's try the
04:03baklava. Oh, all right. So this is my husband and my son. That's like their favorite thing to order.
04:10So I'm so excited. That's pretty cool. Oh my gosh. I love baklava. So I will tell you that all of our
04:16flavors are culturally curious. That's because we are a family of travelers. We love to travel
04:23internationally. And so, right. Oh my gosh. This is literally frozen baklava. It's oh my gosh. And
04:36wait, can you just go through all the nose that's on the front? Go through all the boxes that you
04:42checked off here in the front. Yeah, exactly. So there's no dairy, no gluten, no soy, and no
04:49artificial ingredients of any kind. We work really hard to mimic the creaminess, the beautiful texture
04:56of regular ice cream, but with none of the crap, none of the crappy ingredients. So our ingredients
05:03are super clean, like eight ingredients, eight to 10 ingredients per, um, and every per, per flavor
05:10and everything that you can recognize. Like literally these are things you can find in your
05:13pantry. So we start with, well, Dwight's our chef, so he can tell you what we start with.
05:18Go ahead. Why? So this is pure sorcery. Okay. Because I don't know how usually there's, if,
05:25if it's like vegan, there's some kind of aftertaste or especially ice cream from my experience,
05:31it tastes kind of like greasy, almost like oily. I'm going to eat with you.
05:37No. Oh my gosh. Okay. Dwight, go ahead. Chef Dwight. How did you do it?
05:43Well, that's, that's easy, right? Simplicity is key. Um, filtered water, raw cashews,
05:52cane sugar, dates, Himalayan pink salt. And we use coconut milk for the baklava.
06:01There's coconut milk, um, and pistachios. And it tastes, I mean, it's literally,
06:08that's what it is. I mean, it's not literally baklava. And it's so creamy. It's got that perfect
06:14texture. And so you can feel good. One of the things that's really important to us that we
06:18have children, we have a family. And as I said, we're Caribbean. So, you know, real food,
06:23real food flavors are really important to us. We're not a processed food family.
06:27Thank you. Yeah. We cook all the time. We start with, we always tell people when we cook,
06:32we start with onions, tomatoes, garlic. Like we start with the real deal. We don't open ingredients.
06:37And so that's what we want. That's the love that we want to give to other people.
06:42Real ingredients, real food, food that you can feel good about food that you can feel your feed
06:46your babies and feel good about it. Oh my gosh. Okay. I'm definitely going to be ordering a few
06:52bundles of this, but more flavors. I could sit and eat that whole tub, but we got more flavors to try.
06:57What's the next flavor you want to have? Okay. We could do, you have the sweet potato pie?
07:01I'm so excited now. Yeah. Or we can do the cheesecake. Okay. I got sweet potato. I got sweet
07:06potato. Okay. Sweet potato pie, y'all. You know, we love sweet potato pie. All right.
07:13So yeah. So sweet potato pie tastes just like your grandma's sweet potato pie.
07:17Sure. It looks like the pie.
07:19Yeah. And that's because it is. It is the pie. Taste that. Let you know. It's so authentic.
07:28We roast real sweet potatoes and we put spices. I mean, and everything we do, by the way, is
07:35handcrafted. It's handcrafted and everything is from scratch. So you're getting like the best quality
07:41ingredients. I'm telling you, y'all, this is sorcery. This is literally like eating a cold sweet
07:48potato pie. So good. And the other thing that I want to point out to you is our, you know,
07:54our little description of what we do, what we're all about. We use cash. First of all,
07:59cashew means cashew in French. And we use that because it's a kind of a symbol for reinvention
08:06for us. Cashew is all over the world. They're used in every type of culture, in every type
08:12of cuisine. And because they're able to kind of be so versatile and reinvent themselves,
08:17we use that as a symbol for saying that people like cashews can reinvent themselves. So it's
08:23part of our mission to work with returning citizens, formerly incarcerated individuals.
08:28Oh my goodness. I love, love that mission for sure. And that's something that our community needs
08:35so much. So thank you so much for taking that on for sure. Okay. We got cheesecake next.
08:43So this is our blueberry cheesecake. And actually this is what it looks like when you get it in our
08:51store. So we have a store in, um, in Baltimore. We're sitting on B more. I don't, I probably
09:02shouldn't be eating with you. This is so good. Thank you. And you see the blueberries. These
09:10are blueberries. So that's a wild, well, he can tell you, but it's a wild organic, um, wild berry,
09:16wild blueberry compote that we make first. And we kind of fold that into the
09:21it's still, it's, listen, this is making, this is making my taste buds very emotional. Okay. This
09:31is too good. Okay. We got a couple more flavors, a couple more. I got horchata. Okay. Now this
09:38is going to be interesting. Cause I don't feel like I've ever had horchata. So yeah, it's a Latin
09:45American drink. You'll find that all throughout the Latin America. And we go to Latin America quite a bit,
09:49Guatemala, Mexico, and you will find this in every single restaurant. It basically is like a milk or a
09:56rice milk with lots of vanilla and cinnamon. And that's what we do.
10:00All right. So I've definitely had the alcoholic version of this. I just didn't know it, but this
10:10was good. Oh, I never had the alcoholic version. That sounds fun. So I imagine like this, this is
10:16giving me like holidays. Cause it's almost like an eggnog. It's almost like that. So in our shop,
10:24Sunday, we make all, uh, rotating seasonal flavors. So we make coquito every year for Christmas.
10:31You gotta come to the shop next. I know that that is popular. If I am ever in B-more, you guys are the
10:38first stop right out of the airport. Last but not least, I, we're just ordering Thai food as we were
10:47prepping. And I was like, make sure you give me a Thai iced tea. Cause I love Thai iced tea.
10:51Oh my God.
10:52I said that one. I figured you might like that one.
10:58Thank you, Dwight. Cause I'm going to love it. And I've never even heard of Thai iced tea being ice
11:05that one was made by our 16 year old. 16 year. Okay. So we just have a trend of just extraordinary
11:14teenagers this week. Oh my goodness. You're a 16 year old. Well, it's a family. It's a family
11:21affair. We have another son who's 11 and he, everybody comes up with flavor. So like this
11:27summer, his favorite, his flavor was a Thai basil berry. That was so popular. It just sold
11:35off. We had to like make it.
11:36Wait for the seven year old 11. Oh, 11 year old. You have some very sophisticated palates
11:43in your house. I would have like a Mac and cheese. This is so. All right, guys, this is
11:52a creamery. They have such incredible, um, flavors, but what makes up all of these is this clean
12:04ingredients, gluten-free, soy-free, no artificial flavors, no dairy, but there's not a weird
12:11aftertaste. So if you actually, yeah.
12:14And less than 200 calories per serving. Oh my gosh. Ain't no other ice cream on the market
12:21that's doing that. So it's just, they have whipped up magic in these tubs. I don't know
12:27how they did it. I'm not going to question it. I'm just going to enjoy it. We are tagging
12:31all of these here. Yes. And thank you. Hats off. Chef's kiss. These are so great. I got
12:39to remind you guys, if you're in Baltimore, if you just want to take a day trip, if you're
12:42close, you need to go to their shop and experience these flavors in person. If you guys aren't
12:50going to Baltimore, you're here at Shop Essence Live. So you know that you can buy them. When
12:54you buy here at Shop Essence Live, you are spending directly with these black owned businesses.
12:58So make sure that y'all support, but make sure you're also, we're curating this amazing shopping
13:03experience for y'all because these products are always so top of the notch, top of the notch.
13:08Now, before I let you guys go, you are a part of the New Voices family. Can you talk a little
13:13bit about what has been like for you to be a part of that community?
13:17It's been unbelievable, actually. It's been the community we really needed in order to
13:23grow. I work directly with Marie. She's been so instrumental in, yes, in helping us get
13:31anything that we need. If I wanted to ask her any question, she's got all the resources. She
13:36keeps saying we're on a Slack channel where there's tons of resources being shared every
13:41day. PR help with Essence, any type of advice. And then they do classes. They do these workshops
13:49that are extremely on point and helpful, very detailed. It's fantastic. Probably the best
13:55community for CPG out there.
13:58So good. So if you are watching this and you are an entrepreneur or you think you want to
14:03be an entrepreneur, I definitely encourage you guys to check out New Voices. We'll leave
14:07our website here at the bottom. Check them out. Join the family. It's free. You have all
14:12these resources at your fingertips for free. You could be sitting on a multimillion dollar
14:16idea. Okay. And you can make it a reality. So definitely do bet on yourself, take a chance
14:23and join. Nicole and Dwight, it's been so great to have you guys on the show. I am just like
14:30hope to see you guys in person at something, festival, something. But yeah, these flavors are
14:36just, I know they were all made with love, right? Cause it just like, if I feel it, I told
14:42you my taste buds is going through it on this. Cause it's just so great. So thank you guys
14:47so much for being on the show. Everybody. Thank you for tuning in and tune in every single
14:53week for more Shop Essence Live. Later, later. Thank you so much.
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