Yolkin: why you should be following Sammie Le's macaron ice cream sandwiches on Instagram

Victoria Stewart on why you need to take a look at London baker Sammie Le's Instagram account
Exotic flavours: Hong Kong Milk Tea, Red Velvet, Hazlenut Chocolate, Yuzu ice cream macarons
Yolkin
Victoria Stewart15 February 2016

Who: Sammie Le, a London baker who started her pop-up business last June, trading at the Street Food Union Market in Soho, out of a need to make some extra money to look after her two children.

Number of followers: 11k

Tagline: ‘The UK's first and only macaron ice cream sandwiches.’

Featured food: Comfort flavours including red velvet – “it caught me off guard how popular that has become” – Mylo and Horlicks, alongside South East Asian flavours such as matcha and black sesame that aren’t readily available. “I think that’s one of the reasons they’ve become so popular. I’m Chinese myself and I’m influenced by the flavours I grew up on… but a lot of western palates are not accustomed, so I did find a niche there… People are looking for the next big thing - so you’re under quite a lot of pressure to come up with the new. But it’s fun, and it keeps me interested.”

Snickers, Skittles and Mellon flavours
Yolkin

Why we should follow her: Her feed is a charming mixture of ice cream swirls, product line-ups and collages of her customers eating her bakes, as well as occasional snaps of her own personal adventures around London.

Takes pictures with: an iPhone.

First post: “The prototype of what I was going to sell. I think it had a purple shell with roasted strawberry and had about 30-40 likes.”

Most popular post: Anything with red velvet, line-ups of flavours, or novelty products. “Sometimes I do heart shapes or characters as people love them. Macarons are already quite photogenic and if you stick in some ice cream people go mad. I remember getting excited by getting 500 followers - now it’s more than 10,000 followers and I can’t really believe it!”

Claims to fame: “I don’t think I’ve had anyone high profile but then again I’m really bad with faces…”

Wimbledon special: Tennis ball macarons with Strawberries and Cream ice cream
Yolkin

Background: Le taught herself to bake when she was younger, and remembers the expression on people's faces when showing them what she’d made. “And then I got better at it. Macarons are very little and so hard to make, but once I’d mastered them I couldn’t stop making them. They’re like these little delights. And I love it when I see people taking photos and socialising around them. That really drives me." Le’s parents were Vietnamese refugees, and because of “the backlash against other races there under the Communist regime” they settled in a refugee camp in Hong Kong where she was born. Instead of staying and enduring high levels of racism, they came to the UK as non-English speakers and Le’s father got a job in Chinatown as a pot washer, eventually graduating to head chef. “On weekends he would always drag me into the kitchen, and I’d watch and be his sous chef. So I’ve always had that connection to food.”

How Yolkin came about: One day, after a particularly big macaron order, Le found herself with lots of spare egg yolks so found an ice cream to use them up with. She bought a cheap ice cream maker, made loads for her children, then two summers ago put the macarons and ice cream together. "I didn’t have the confidence to do it properly until a year later and then I thought I’d give it a shot, just thinking it would last the summer. In September it went mad, and got really big on social media.”

Best London food Instagrams - in pictures

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How it works: A list of ‘flavours of the week’ goes up on Tuesday, and the pop-up shop opens Saturday and Sundays from midday (Le usually sells out by 2pm) at 40 Great Windmill Street. “People queue up before I open, and then I’m done by 1.30pm. I only bring so much because it’s not my shop and I can only store so much. So when I’m done, I’m done.”

Look out for: Le is working on a hot cross bun flavour, a cinnamon bun flavour, and vegan options. In the spring she hopes to bring out both dairy and dairy-free ice cream scoops and will do Street Food Union market again.

Follow Yolkin on Instagram @yolkinmacice

Follow Victoria on Twitter @vicstewart

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