Jeni’s Appalachian Acorn Pie is a new limited-edition ice cream flavor made with flour milled from foraged Ohio oak acorns, released October 1, 2026 online and in Jeni’s scoop shops nationwide after a five-year effort to build an entirely new acorn supply chain.
Five Years to Make Jeni’s Appalachian Acorn Pie
According to the official PR Newswire release from Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams, the flavor started about five years ago when the brand’s R&D team asked whether it would be possible to make an ice cream with acorns — a food source that’s abundant in the U.S. but not commercially regulated or distributed.
- Jeni’s partnered with Route 9 Action Network, an Ohio agricultural cooperative, and provided grants to help it forage and process the acorns, including washing and leaching out the tannins to make them safe to eat.
- The processed acorns were then milled into flour at a nearby Amish farm — a process the brand says required coordinating by snail mail, a community phone and in-person visits.
- The result is an ice cream described as nutty and sweet, “somewhere in the realm of hazelnut, coconut, and chestnut,” folded with a graham cracker swirl.
“The problem was, those early international sources for acorn flour gave us a first taste of what this ice cream could be, which was so fragrant and nutty and beautiful… but also felt wildly familiar,” said Beth Stallings, Senior Director of Innovation at Jeni’s, in the release.
Appalachian Acorn Pie is available while supplies last at Jenis.com and in Jeni’s scoop shops nationwide.
Does This Affect a Recipe You’re Planning to Make?
If you’re building a fall dessert spread around Jeni’s seasonal drops, our Cold Stone Creamery Fall Flavors 2026 coverage rounds out other new autumn ice cream releases hitting shelves and scoop shops this season.
Quick Questions
- Where can I buy Appalachian Acorn Pie? At Jenis.com and in Jeni’s scoop shops nationwide, while supplies last.
- Why did it take five years to make? Jeni’s had to build an entirely new acorn supply chain from scratch, partnering with an Ohio agricultural cooperative to forage and process the acorns, then an Amish farm to mill them into flour.
Is This Common?
A limited-edition seasonal flavor is routine for Jeni’s, which rotates new flavors frequently, but building a brand-new raw-ingredient supply chain from scratch — foraging, tannin-leaching and custom milling — for a single ice cream flavor is unusual even for a brand known for unconventional ingredients. Supply is explicitly capped (“very limited,” “while supplies last”), so availability will likely be short-lived and regionally uneven.
Update Log
- October 2, 2026: Article published one day after the PR Newswire announcement and nationwide release.
