Meet the Pastry Chef Serving Farm-Fresh, Plant-Based Gelato

Sheree Bishop, Communications Coordinator
October 4, 2024

On a busy Saturday morning at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, it’s easy to find Flora Gelateria. In their tent in front of the Ferry Building, decorated with various shades of pink, Christine Law and her daughter, Audrey, serve a variety of dairy-free gelato flavors that you can enjoy in a cup or over a warm, fresh waffle. Along with Christine’s husband, Brian, this family runs a unique business focused on climate-friendly desserts. Some flavors, like the Flavor King Pluot, are made with ingredients sourced fresh from the farmers market. 

Flora Gelateria’s plant-based emphasis is in the name. “Flora, like flora and fauna. I feel like that’s a joyful name. It’s a feeling of growth and nature,” says Christine, adding that her business’s name references being in touch with the farmers who grow her ingredients. “That’s the core of what I’m doing. I really thought [the name] had a nice way of incorporating all of that.” 

Her pink tent, magenta logo, and pastel pink aprons are based on childhood memories of going to Baskin-Robbins and enjoying their chocolate and strawberry flavors. In particular, the former colors of the Baskin-Robbins logo, a pairing of brown and pink, bring back a sense of happiness and nostalgia.

Dairy-Free Gelato for Non-Vegans and Vegans Alike

In her 20 years as a fine-dining pastry chef, Christine specialized in ice cream and gelato. During that time, she sourced ingredients for her pastries from farmers in the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market and soon relied on their high level of freshness and quality, and for some, their commitment to organic growing practices. 

After leaving fine dining, Christine began volunteering with Foodwise in 2022. Participating in the farmers market was a convenient way to get fresh air, meet new people, and give back to the market community she loved. Now, she returns to the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market as a food maker and small business owner.

“Gelato is what I loved to make more than anything,” she says. “And I have a lot of additional education in that field.” Christine took an ice cream manufacturing course at Penn State. She also took several courses with a visiting gelato master from Italy, Giacomo Schiavon, who owns one of Bologna’s most popular gelaterias. 

“He invited me to visit his shop in Bologna, where I learned how much we shared the same artisanal values, making our mix and flavors from scratch,” Christine says. “This is an artisan’s machine, not a production powerhouse, which is how and why we make small batches that are hand-extracted in the Italian tradition. You can experience the difference in the texture.”

Gelato is typically made with milk, cream, and sugar. Flora Gelateria uses milk from nuts as a substitute, along with a flavor mix made from fresh fruits or artisanal ingredients such as coffee. All of it is churned at a slower speed, so less air is incorporated into the mixture, leading to a dense and creamy result. According to Christine, one of the benefits of gelato’s warmer temperature and thick texture is its flavor. “Your palate is not frozen and instead perceives the flavor to full effect. The texture, with a bit of chew, adds to the indulgent eating quality,” she says.

Her nut-based recipe comes just in time for many Americans to start using plant-based alternatives to dairy products. A survey from Consumer Reports found that last year, 35% of Americans drank or cooked with plant-based milk.  

Christine hopes that people can set aside any reservations that they might have about dairy-free or vegan foods. As someone who is dairy-free and gluten-free, she found that gluten-free waffles paired with dairy-free gelato seemed to be a perfect match.

Christine developed the recipe for her waffles at home, during the COVID lockdowns. After creating her own sourdough starter for pizza, she used the leftover starter in a new batter for her waffles. “Everybody always loves these waffles,” she says, “The waffle with the coffee ice cream, if you have that at 8 am, that’s a great start to your day.” 

Sourcing from Local Farms for Climate-Friendly Gelato

Many of Flora’s seasonal flavors use ingredients sourced from local farms at the Ferry Plaza, such as Knoll Farms figs or Frog Hollow Farm pluots, which both appear on their current menu alongside chocolate hazelnut and coffee-flavored options. This fall, keep an eye out for apple-flavored gelato, featuring apples from Devoto Orchards. 

“I love selling at the market because I feel that I am right there with my target audience,” Christine says. “These are people who have the same values I do around what I put into my product.” For her, those values include centering environmental stewardship. She says that part of having a sustainable product is supporting small farms, and making her own flavorings from scratch with locally grown ingredients.

“I want to appeal to more than just vegans. I want to appeal to people who are thinking about the environment and who want to make choices that are better for the future of our planet,” Christine says.

If more people ate a plant-based diet, levels of pollution used in food production could drop overall. Project Drawdown aggregated data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. They concluded that, if 50% of the world leaned more toward a plant-rich diet, global emissions could drop substantially (around 54 to 79 gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions, to be exact).

“Don’t choose this product because you’re vegan, or because you have a dairy allergy,” Christine says. “Choose it because it’s the right thing to do for our planet. Choose it because it’s delicious, and it’s as good as or better than any dairy ice cream or gelato you’ll have.”

Support Flora Gelateria at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market on Saturdays.

Topics: Chef, Environment, Family, Farmers market, Small business