A date to remember: The Abu Dhabi ice cream maker turning palm trees into soft serve | CNN

By the time night falls and the last few customers trickle out of an ice cream parlor tucked behind Abu Dhabi’s Zayed Port, it may seem as though the day’s work is done. But for Amira Al Dosari, it’s 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 to be served at Al Dosari’s shop, Ice Station — many featuring ingredients that come from an unusualsource: the date palm. The date palm tree is a symbol of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the dates that grow in bunches on it are one of the country’s most important agricultural exports. Globally, nearly 11 million metric tons of dates were produced in 2024. Middle Eastern and North African countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt led the way, with the UAE ranking in the top 10, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. 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 wer