New MoonScoops is an ice cream parlor like no other.

It may look like the popular ice cream flavor and the taste is spot on. It’s studded with dark shards of cookie. But what’s in the container at MoonScoops Ice Creamery has no cream, and no milk substitute.

“I feel like I’m a bit of a mad scientist,” says Lisa Belle Marsh, owner of the new parlor in Marina.

Indeed, her colorful lineup of fruity “moon ices” may not exist elsewhere. They are an experiment gone right, assembled from fresh-squeezed orange juice, ripe raspberries and the like and formed into a sorbet-Italian ice blend that she refers to as a hybrid.

“The sugar content is less than a sorbet, more than an ice,” Marsh explains.

MoonScoops offers 20 different flavors of moon ice, all made in house. A rainbow to the eyes, a carnival on the palate, the sorbet-ice is rich yet light, juicy and refreshing. The only time Marsh reaches for an ingredient that’s not natural is—appropriately—to create a flavor that tastes just like frozen Kool-Aid.

“I was motivated by my kids,” she explains. They happen to love Italian ice. One day as she began scooping a store-bought brand, Marsh had a moment of inspiration. “I can make it with fresher ingredients, all from fresh fruit,” she recalls thinking.

Opening an ice cream parlor was not a stretch. Marsh and her husband own the Teriyaki Madness franchise, just a few doors away in The Dunes on Monterey Bay shopping center in Marina. The parlor opened on Valentine’s Day and still greets customers with a wall of roses.

“I wanted to make it a welcoming, beautiful space,” she says. “We’ve had an incredible response. I’ve been so joyfully surprised.”

MoonScoops features organic soft serve ice cream, as well as her moon ice and oversized cookies, also baked in house. Marsh is constantly tinkering with new flavors. But the “mad scientist” in her truly shows when it comes to the non-dairy offerings.

Cookies and cream is one of them. Peanut butter and jelly—which is every bit an ice cream version of slathering raspberry jelly and smooth peanut butter on bread—is another. She solved the equation of creamy-minus-dairy by swapping in avocado.

In PB&J guacamole, the presence of avocado is detected only in texture, rather than flavor. It’s so deceptive that the cookies and cream version sold out.

“This is fun for me,” Marsh says. “I love making new flavors.”

MoonScoops Ice Creamery, 110 General Stilwell Drive #104, Marina. Open noon-9pm Monday-Saturday, noon-8pm Sunday. 901-3384, moonscoops.com.