La Jolla Shores resident’s ice cream line provides for people and pooches

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of us dusted off our cookbooks and started experimenting in the kitchen. But La Jolla Shores resident Penne Horn dusted off the ice cream maker she got as a “joke” and got busy in what would become a win-win for two-legged and four-legged San Diegans.

She created ice cream flavors inspired by neighborhood dogs. When interest picked up and people wanted to donate money to Horn in exchange for her ice cream, she decided to use the proceeds to buy bags of dog food and donate them to local animal shelters through St. James by-the-Sea Episcopal Church in La Jolla and the food bank at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in City Heights.

“When COVID happened, people ran out and got dogs. But with people losing their jobs, they soon couldn’t feed themselves, let alone their dogs,” Horn said. “I read that people were hurting ... and I like dogs. So it was natural for me to think of how to care for the dogs. And we have so many homeless people in San Diego that need help, and their dogs need help, too.”

Thus far she has donated more than 400 pounds of dog food.

“It’s been fun, and I like doing it. It has made me and Twoee happy,” she said. Twoee is her 3-year-old wire-haired dachshund.

The ice cream line, inspired by her tiny companion, is called Twoee’s Howlin’ Good Ice Cream, and flavors are named for other dogs.

Twoee’s Howlin’ Good Ice Cream comes in a variety of flavors, with proceeds going toward the purchase and donation of dog food.

(Courtesy)

“There was Petunia Peach, named after my friend’s French bulldog; Molly B’s Mint Chip, for John and Kay’s silky terrier; and Lola’s Limoncello, for my niece’s dog,” Horn wrote on her blog, pennehorn.com.

The afternoon she spoke to the La Jolla Light, she said she was making chocolate peanut butter, vanilla and salted caramel batches.

“I’m going to call the last one Cooper’s Caramel-by-the-Sea. I have all kinds of crazy flavors that seem to materialize,” she said. “It’s been a fun thing to do.”

Horn develops the flavors and recipes with help from her son, Doug, who owns restaurants in Texas. She started with a cookbook but wanted to find ways to “amp it up” and would ask her son about ways to change the recipes — what to add, what to substitute.

“Plus, I make ones I like, so we have to have a pumpkin-based ice cream for Halloween and a peppermint-based one for the holidays,” she said.

Coming up with flavors has given her something to be excited about. “There’s always something to wag a tail about, even in a worldwide pandemic,” she said. ◆