Eat ice cream to keep pandas in Atlanta

By Howard Pousner

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Giant pandas like snacking on bamboo, but if you like Zoo Atlanta’s chubby stars and also enjoy snacking on ice cream, we’ve got a scoop for you.

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Vino Wong, vwong@ajc.com Jake’s Ice Cream hopes to raise $10,000 toward Zoo Atlanta’s Give So They Stay campaign.

Related

• Give So They Stay campaign
• Pints for pandas

Jake’s Ice Cream has just introduced the flavor Pandamonium, with 50 cents from every scoop sold benefiting Zoo Atlanta’s Give So They Stay campaign. The drive aims to raise $500,000 by year’s end to help extend the zoo’s panda loan from China an additional five years.

Pandamonium is a fusion of Sencha green tea, cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg with a sweet cream base.

The recipe came from an unlikely source: SunTrust summer intern Kyle Rosen, who participated in an ice cream social game of “Celebrity Apprentice,” with Jake’s founder Jake Rothschild in the Donald Trump role.

“It’s amazing. He got it on the first try, which doesn’t usually happen for us,” Rothschild said. He describes the flavor as “very exotic, creamy and spicy. But I don’t mean spicy hot — it tastes like something that would come from the Orient.”

Jake’s, scooping its latest creation at its Old Fourth Ward and Emory area locations, hopes to raise $10,000 toward the panda campaign, which has received donations of $66,000 since its mid-June launch.

If you’d prefer a pint of a different sort to help support the cause, consider the Pints for Pandas fund-raiser at Sweetwater Brewery Friday. For $25, you get a “fill-it-up-all-night pint glass.” All proceeds benefit, hiccup, you know who. Information: pintsforpandas.blogspot.com.