Ice Cream/Novelties

RSS

Breyers introduces new ice cream flavors in its Blasts line, including Girl Scout cookie-inspired flavors.

A new Outdoor Adventure Series ice cream is available through Gifford’s Ice Cream, Skowhegan, Maine.

For years, processors have reduced the fat and total sugars in a wide variety of frozen dessert formats with varying degrees of technical, nutritional, sensory and economic success.

By most measures, ice cream is not a growing market. Production is declining, sales are stalled and manufacturers aren’t increasing prices by much. Yet there are more plants making ice cream.

Fans can like the Facebook page of their favorite ice cream brand and Tweet all day long about its flavors. But sometimes, to really understand a company’s mission, you have to meet face-to-face with the owners and watch how they make ice cream. That’s the approach Snoqualmie Ice Cream owner Barry Bettinger takes with his distributors. He invites them to tour the fully sustainable manufacturing plant in Maltby, Wash., and make ice cream. Once the visitors see the passion of the company’s 12 employees and the integrity in manufacturing a super-premium organic ice cream (19% butterfat and 15% overrun), they “get it,” Bettinger said.

Cornell University has a world-renown dairy science department. But alumnus Neal Gottlieb, the founder of Three Twins Ice Cream, graduated from the College of Human Ecology with a degree in consumer economics and housing. He did enroll in a milk quality course — for a day. He dropped the class because it conflicted with his rowing schedule. As for Cornell’s famed creamery, Gottlieb admits he was not a huge consumer of its dairy products, but he fondly remembers the 99-cent ice cream sandwiches.

Ice cream makers still use chocolate, but their newer, edgier flavors include tropical fruits, lemons and coconuts. And then there’s avocado ice cream.

Ramar Foods, producer of Magnolia ice cream, introduces a new avocado ice cream flavor to its all-natural line.