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New release · House collection
Brownies & Ice Cream
The end of a good dinner: the plates are cleared, nobody has stood up yet, and somebody has just said “should we?” Dark cocoa, Madagascar vanilla, and a little brown butter, in cocoa glass.
$48 8.5 oz · 50 hours
- Top
- Madagascar vanilla bean, cold cream
- Heart
- Dark cocoa absolute, toasted walnut
- Base
- Brown butter, tonka, a pinch of sea salt
Brownies & Ice Cream is a candle. It contains no brownies and no ice cream, and should not be eaten, even a little, even to check. This is printed on the lid, the box, and now the website.
Sold at the counter at 628 Vallejo Street. To hold a glass, call (415) 555-0148 and we’ll set one aside under your name for a week. Limit four per household, not as a marketing tactic, but because there is only so much cocoa absolute in Ghana that we are comfortable asking for.
The story
Fourteen months, thirty-one pours.
We had not released a new house scent since Mission Fig in 2019. June wanted the next one to smell like something people do together, rather than somewhere they’ve been. Martin wanted it to have a cost of goods under eleven dollars. It took a little over a year to satisfy both of them.
The cocoa comes from a Fairtrade cooperative of about 1,400 growers in the Ashanti region of Ghana, through an importer in Oakland who visits twice a year. The vanilla is grown in the Sava region of Madagascar and bought direct, with growers paid before the harvest rather than after it. Both are listed by name on our sourcing page.
The research and development team, which is June, Martin, and Teodora from the counter, reports an average gain of four pounds over the development period. We have recorded this as a cost of goods, and it has put us over eleven dollars.
“Every good dinner ends in roughly the same place. We wanted a candle you could light when you’d like to get there sooner.”
June Hale, co-founder
Development
How it came together.
August 2025
June asks for a candle that smells like the end of a good dinner. Martin asks for a budget. Both requests are approved.
October 2025
Test pours one through nine. Pour six smells like a brownie. Pour seven smells like a brownie that has been left in a car.
January 2026
We source cocoa absolute from a Fairtrade cooperative in the Ashanti region of Ghana. The candle immediately improves.
April 2026
Vanilla is added. The ice cream arrives. Teodora, at the counter, is asked to try pour twenty-two blind and identifies it as “Sunday.”
July 2026
Pour thirty-one is approved. Three test customers ask whether they can eat it. We redesign the lid.
October 2026
Brownies & Ice Cream goes on the bench, in cocoa glass, labeled clearly.
The pour log, the weights, and the jar on the high shelf are in the research report.
Burning it
Best after eight.
Brownies & Ice Cream is a warm, round scent, and it fills a room faster than our other glasses. We suggest an hour after dinner, in a room with the door open, near people you are willing to share with.
Let the first burn reach the edge of the glass, about three hours. Trim the wick to a quarter inch each time. Put it out before bed, and before you go looking for an actual brownie, which you will.
- Wax
- Soy and beeswax blend, poured in-house
- Wick
- Organic cotton, lead- and zinc-free
- Vessel
- Cocoa glass, made in Ohio, washable and refillable
- Fragrance
- Phthalate-free, 9% load, IFRA compliant
- Pairs with
- Dessert, the absence of dessert, a long phone call
Early reviews
From the first week at the counter.
★★★★★
“Lit it during a dinner party and two guests asked when dessert was coming. There was no dessert. Still five stars.”
★★★★★
“I did not eat it. I would like that on the record, since the lid seems to expect that I might.”
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