She's Got the Scoop

In Richmond, Virginia, Rabia Kamara creates ice cream that celebrates Black culture and her heritage

- TARA MASSOULEH MCCAY

RABIA KAMARA got a first glimpse of her future career at the age of 8 when her mom bought her a Mrs. Fields dessert cookbook and told her to note any recipes she'd like to make. "I basically marked all of them," she says. "I told my parents I wanted to be the next Mrs. Fields, and I didn't even know what that meant when I said it." Now as the owner of Ruby Scoops, an ice-cream shop in Richmond, Virginia, she is closer to realizing her childhood dream than she ever imagined.

After Kamara graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University, she was all set to attend law school when she decided that if she was going to spend the rest of her life working, it should be doing something she loved. She enrolled in L'Academie de Cuisine Culinary School in Gaithersburg, Maryland, where she reignited her passion for sweets and also discovered an obsession with making confections.

"Something in my brain just kind of clicked," she remembers. "I like to create, and it's easy with ice cream because it's such a blank canvas. As long as it freezes and scoops, it can be any flavor."