Beckie Jacobs of Serendipity Homemade Ice Cream

"After three days of making ice cream for eight hours a day, I decided it was something I could do. I was in my late 30s. I didn't know if I was physically capable; I didn't know what it took. I found out that, yes, I could do it, and it was fun. I wasn't hurt. I was fine."

It took some cajoling to get her husband on board, but he did. Jacobs opened the business in 2003.

"I wanted to be the place that, when kids started going away to college and they came back their first Christmas or first summer, the first thing they wanted to do is go to Serendipity. And it's starting to happen. I've had it for seven years. We have kids who first came in when they were toddlers, and now they come in by themselves because they're old enough to wander around Webster by themselves."

But she's gone far beyond that. With a booming wholesale business, Jacobs spends much of her time working one-on-one with local chefs to create the ice creams they want on their menus. "I spend a lot of time running the wholesale end of my business, making sure the orders are getting out. I have a fabulous, fabulous new ice cream chef named Mary Harden [who was featured in Chef's Choice last year]. Mary has taken real ownership of the job, with both coming up with new flavors or saying, 'Hey, why don't we do this anymore?'

"I love working with my chefs. That's one of the best parts of my job. My staff and my chefs are the two most rewarding parts of my business."

Jacobs still works to create flavors, particularly when someone wants something specific. "If someone says, 'Can you make something that tastes like...' something that's not ice cream, like gooey butter cake. OK, what's in it? What are the component parts of that product? And we try to find ingredients -- instead of taking a piece of gooey butter cake, throwing it into the blender and putting it in the machine -- we try to find the flavors, the essence, of that product and get those flavors into the ice cream. What are the two main ingredients in gooey butter cake? If you go home and you make a gooey butter cake, what's in it?"

Case in point: working with Pi pastry chef Mathew Rice to create just the right ice creams to go with his creations at the Central West End shop and the milkshake bar in Kirkwood. "All of the ice creams we make for Pi are ice creams that Mathew and I have come up with together. We've either taken something we were already making and tweaked it in a way that's different for them, or we've created their own vanilla blend.

"All three of the [Pi restaurants] carry cinnamon, which is my cinnamon. I told Mathew, I already make it. There's nothing I can do to this that would make it all that unique to you. But other than that, the vanilla and salty caramel we make is just for them. We do make another salty caramel using other ingredients that's different that I sell to other people, but it's not the same recipe. It's good. It's just different."

As for the original shop, Jacobs' son, Jason, works as general manager, while she spends most of her time at the company's commissary in Richmond Heights. Still, she doesn't hesitate to get behind the counter to whip up a sundae. When her son doesn't want it, she shrugs and eats it for lunch. It's not a baked potato, but it seems to be exactly what she wants.