Slice by HB Baking Moves to Kapahulu With Sundaes, Scoops and Shave Ice
The new shop has easy, free parking at Kilohana Square—and you can still get those ice cream pies and cakes, too.
Photo: Katrina Valcourt
Just because it’s fall doesn’t mean the temperature has dropped enough for us to give up ice cream—especially when it’s layered between cake or atop crumbly pie crust in some of the most beautiful slices in Honolulu’s dessert landscape.
Heather Lukela started Slice by HB Baking in 2019. A talented pastry chef who worked at Nobu Waikīkī and The Kāhala Hotel & Resort, she leaned into her passion full-time after being furloughed during COVID-19 and opened Slice’s first location in 2021. That stall at the Chinese Cultural Plaza won a nod for Best Ice Cream Pie, the dessert combo of our dreams, in our 2021 Best of HONOLULU feature. And by this summer, Lukela’s creations outgrew the small space, and she closed up shop.
SEE ALSO: Ice Cream Pies by the Slice Are a New Thing in Chinatown
But not for long. Slice by HB Baking reopened in September in the old Runners Route in Kilohana Square between Salon Source and a Japanese antique shop. One of the biggest perks is its easy, free parking, but the shop comes with an expanded menu, too.
Photo: Katrina Valcourt
Now, in addition to those gorgeous ice cream pies and cakes, Slice by HB Baking offers ice cream cupcakes, shave ice, sundaes and scoops of ice cream made fresh daily using as many local ingredients as possible.
When I stop by recently, there’s a yuzu meringue cupcake of yuzu sherbet in white cake topped with torched meringue as well as a bananas foster cupcake of banana ice cream in rum cake with cinnamon whipped cream and peanuts on top, which I devour at the small dine-in counter. Lukela says she’ll have new flavors by the weekend, so I come back to find white chocolate ice cream in red velvet cake with white chocolate mousse and green tea ice cream and toffee in white cake with matcha whipped cream.
A bananas foster ice cream cupcake. Photo: Katrina Valcourt
She offers cupcakes as mini versions of the popular ice cream cake slices because those can be overwhelming for one person to eat. It takes a few minutes for the ice cream to thaw enough to make digging in easier, but I love the handheld serving (I’ve already eaten a slice of pie and just want a lil something extra). Cupcakes are $6.50 and, like the pies, aren’t overly sweet, so it’s perfectly normal to order multiple things. No one’s judging you.
New for this shop, in an area that already has some of the island’s most popular shave ice spots, is the chef’s special shave ice. Lukela says that her husband, David, bought the shave ice machine so he could have the dessert 24/7. “Nobu had the best shave ice,” she says, so they created their own rendition for nostalgia’s sake.
On a particularly crowded Sunday afternoon, I take my bowl of mango, coconut and lilikoi‘i ice with dulce de leche ice cream, strawberry syrup, condensed milk, chunks of pineapple, strawberry slices and chewy mochi to go, the swirls of dulce de leche coating my tongue. At $17, it’s pricey but luxe, with the ice made from real fruit juice, not syrups. “One day I’m gonna spend a day off at the beach, and then head to the shop to help myself to a shave ice,” Lukela says. “Living the dream.”
Photo: Katrina Valcourt
Individual ice cream scoops range from classics like coffee and strawberry to seasonal starfruit sorbet (perfectly tart and foraged by the Lukelas) and dairy-free options ($5, or $7 for two scoops). Non-frozen snacks include bibingka brownies ($4) and chocolate chip cookie crisps ($6), inspired by a cookie brittle recipe from a Food52 cookbook. I share some with my family, who all go wide-eyed at that first bite.
You can’t have an ice cream shop without sundaes. On a recent day, Slice’s include Tahitian vanilla ice cream, cookie crisps, hot fudge, peanuts and whipped cream ($12). Next up, Lukela’s thinking of warm apple crisp and caramel for fall. The price for the sundae varies.
While the pie menu changes about twice a year, favorite flavors remain, including Strawberry Shortcake with strawberry and birthday cake ice cream with a sugar cookie crust and Fruity Pebbles on top; Snuggy Bear, coffee almond fudge and English toffee ice cream atop an Oreo crust with a salted milk crumble; and Caramel Banana Butterfinger, which marries Butterfinger and banana dulce de leche ice cream with a graham cracker crust and salted peanut crumble. New, there’s the dairy-, gluten- and nut-free Caribbean Queen featuring a coconut shortbread crust, coconut sorbet, pineapple sorbet and passion orange crumble.
A slice of Snuggy Bear pie. Photo: Katrina Valcourt
Lukela changes cake flavors more frequently to keep from getting bored, so look out on social media for these.
As before, you order by the slice ($8.50 for pie, $13 for the cake slice of the day). You can sometimes get whole pies ($69 to $78) on the same day, depending on availability. Ice cream cakes are $65 for a 6-inch grab-and-go; custom cakes need to be ordered a few days in advance and start at $75.
Open Wednesday and Thursday noon to 8 p.m., Friday and Saturday noon to 9 p.m., Sunday noon to 5 p.m., 1016 Kapahulu Ave., Unit 150, (808) 202-8601, hbbaking.com, @slicebyhbbaking
