Sweet Innovation: How an Abu Dhabi Ice Cream Maker Turns Date Palms into Gourmet Soft Serve

Tucked behind Abu Dhabi’s Zayed Port, the ice cream parlor Ice Station has served more than 100 flavors utilizing ingredients from the date palm. By the time night falls and the last few customers leave, Amira Al Dosari's workday is just beginning. Her shift starts in the kitchen at 9 p.m., where she spends up to three hours prepping, churning, and tasting 12 different bases before they are transformed into unique batches of premium soft serve. By morning, a dozen flavors are ready at Ice Station, many featuring ingredients from the date palm.

The date palm tree is a symbol of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and its dates are one of the country’s most important agricultural exports. Globally, nearly 11 million metric tons of dates were produced in 2024, with Middle Eastern and North African countries leading the way, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

Amira Al Dosari, 53, didn’t intend to showcase dates when she founded the store in 2023. That changed after she took ice cream-making courses around the world and saw how reliant many recipes were on ready-made mixes, preservatives, and artificial flavorings, alongside high sugar content. Ice Station’s mission is to make ice cream free of artificial ingredients. That led her to experiment with kholas rotab, the softest stage of the kholas date. Its natural sweetness inspired her to rework her recipe without adding any sugar, relying instead on the dietary fiber and natural sweetness of the whole fruit.

After countless attempts and 15 broken machines, Al Dosari created a rotab-flavored ice cream. She eventually realized that the entire date palm tree, from roots to trunk, could provide ingredients, inspiring 145 flavors over three years. For instance, she uses date palm leaves instead of Japanese green tea powder to create a caffeine-free version known as “safcha.” Her daughter, Ghalia Al Mazrouei, a sustainability consultant, helped her brew leftover date seeds into a caffeine-free coffee, which they pour over ice cream to create an “affogato.”

Al Dosari has also utilized palm pollen and date molasses, while continuing to experiment with international favorites like Costa Rican pineapple and ube, as well as savory variations including smoked salmon with cream cheese. For the founder, these date-laden scoops celebrate regional identity and cultural heritage, reimagining traditional Emirati desserts like “khabisa” and “rahash.” While she has opened a second branch of Ice Station, scaling up internationally remains a challenge due to quality concerns, keeping her focused on her larger mission to promote natural ice cream and put Abu Dhabi on the map.