Coffee & Treats in Gainesville

The founders of Working Cow Homemade share more than just a name. Fueled by their mutual love for frozen desserts, Tim and Tim craft more than 100 varieties of hand-blended ice cream using only quality ingredients. To ensure that these ingredients—which include grade-A cream, pure cane sugar, and fruits—come together to produce a superior taste and silky texture, staffers mingle them in icy batch freezers before scooping the finished product onto cones. Flavors rotate weekly, and the roster of possibilities ranges from basic vanilla and chocolate to Crazy Cake, a cake-flavored ice cream loaded with ribbons of blue frosting, cake pieces, sprinkles, and an emergency straitjacket. Staffers are also at the ready with delicious dessert alternatives including sugar-free flavors and sherbets. Working Cow peddles its signature ice creams in a space shared with Gumby’s Pizza, and offers its own menu of savory salads and wraps.

The Flour Pot Bakery contains a mélange of culinary influences at what appears to be a seemingly straightforward bakery. The team uses two-thirds of the 2,200 square-foot space solely for the production of handmade french, italian, and swiss breads, Jewish challa, tahitian mousse, and of course, Florida citrus brioche. Every drop of water is filtered before its added to the unbleached, unbromated, premium flour, and the crew limits the amount of sugar in its recipes, save for decadent favorites such as éclairs and triple-layer chocolate cakes. Though the shop’s case primarily displays sweet treats, lunch and breakfast has a place in the bakery as well. Croissants and the shop’s signature bread sandwich everything from eggs and ham to turkey and tuna, which customers can enjoy within the sunny café, or take to the local farmer’s market, grocer, or misguided Mars rover.