With the good weather, ice cream is a popular subject for news outlets. We have compiled our favourite news stories relating to ice cream, including new recipes and a major store to start selling vegan ice cream.
The gelateria at the bottom of Park Street, Bristol serves a range of delightful desserts and it frequently scoops awards – including a highly-coveted Great Taste trophy and no fewer than four Great Taste awards for its products in September last year.
Some of its best sellers include Neapolitan coffee, pistachio and hazelnut gelatos and its chocolate sorbetto, but it has just introduced a brand new product which is sure to raise a few eyebrows.
For just one month, the parlour is serving limited edition activated CHARCOAL vanilla gelato.
This unique flavour is made from the powder that is left from a coconut shell. It is produced by heating coconut shells to extremely high temperatures until they are carbonised, and the result is an ash which is processed with steam or hot air.
As well as being extremely Instagrammable, activated charcoal has numerous health benefits including whitening teeth, helping prevent hangovers and acting as a detoxifier, according to experts.
Luisa Fontana, head gelato chef at Swoon, said: “We have a lot of fun coming up with ideas for new gelato flavours and have been discussing charcoal for a while, so I was really excited to be able to make it.
“As well as having numerous health benefits, it also has a unique colour, something that I hope will encourage customers to try it.”
Swoon’s gelato is freshly made every day on site and churned very slowly to achieve a rich and creamy texture distinct from that of ice cream with which it is commonly confused.
Gelato is also noticeably less cold than ice cream – typically served at -14˚c rather than -18˚ – and because it contains less fat, the flavours are more intense.
The question is, are you brave enough to try it?
Read more about “Swoon” in our Artisan Gelato case study.
Avocado is in right now. Gelato is in right now. So we guess it was only a matter of time before ‘The Avolato’ made an appearance on London’s dining scene. Snowflake Gelato is bringing the creamy, vegan avocado-gelato goodness to ice cream-loving Londoners and Londonist couldn’t resist finding out exactly how they make it.
Snowflake Gelato has outlets in Marble Arch, Bayswater, Soho, Selfridge’s and South Kensington.
You have GUAC to be kidding me – avocado ice cream? ?
Posted by Londonist
A popular ice cream man is hanging up his scoop after 40 years in the business., reports the Great Yarmouth Mercury.
Barry Layen, of Gorleston, started out in 1978 in a Mister Softee van, before starting Barry’s Soft Ices in 1992.
For 50 weeks a year Mr Layen, who will turn 65 at the end of the month, completed his round in the Gorleston, Belton and Bradwell area, making many friends along the way.
Mr Layen said: “It’s been good. I get on well with people and most of them get on with me.
“I think interacting with people has been the best part. You know with your regulars what is going on and it is quite nice to feel part of the community. I might miss that a bit, but I’m sure I will see a lot of them around town.
“I got quite a few retirement cards and one family even had a plaque made saying ‘world’s best ice cream man, happy retirement.”
Over the years, the industry and the faces have changed, but the most popular ice cream has remained the same, according to Mr Layen.
He said: “It has changed a lot. Way back in 1978 when I started not many people had a freezer in the house, so you would buy ice lollies daily.
“Then supermarkets started springing up and you started getting multi-packs and discount this, discount that, which knocked it down a bit. But I’m now serving the children of children from back then.
“The soft ice cream has probably always been the best seller though, everybody likes that.”
Leanne Mather, who lives in Baliol Road in Gorleston, is one of Mr Layen’s many regulars who say he brought a sprinkle of goodwill to the community.
She said: “Everyone from Baliol and Paston Road, past and present, wish Barry all the best in his retirement.
“He was a lot of people’s lifelines – good old Barry is the saying in our house.
“Barry even let you have things on tick when you needed bread and milk.
“He is a top man and will be truly missed.”
But Mr Layen says he is looking forward to “coning” off his career.
He said: “I’m just going to relax and chill and do things I couldn’t do when I was working all the hours, six days a week.”
British dairy farmers who produce and sell ice cream from the farm gate are being encouraged to sign up for the NFU’s nationwide Ice Cream Map.
The interactive map, which already features 60 farms in England and Wales producing real British ice cream, will promote UK dairy farming in time for peak sales this summer report “Farmers Weekly”
A campaign, “from cow to cone” will run simultaneously with the map, promoting the stories behind real British ice cream producers and the process of how its made.
The UK was the world’s second-largest importer of ice cream in value terms in 2016, buying in £235m worth of the product – equal to a quarter of total world imports, second only to Germany which imported £241m, according to research from IndexBox.
In contrast, the UK was only the seventh-largest exporter of ice cream, shipping just £106m in 2016 giving the UK a net deficit on ice cream of almost 230%.
“It’s good to be able to highlight how some of our dairy farmers are adding value to milk on the farm,” said NFU dairy board chairman, Michael Oakes.
“We first recognised a couple of years ago that many of our dairy farmer members have diversified into producing their own ice cream and it would be a great idea to create a map to show exactly where the public can go to buy real, British local ice cream.”
Mr Oakes said the NFU already has 60 producers on the map and throughout the summer months, the British dairy ice cream map will continue to grow as more NFU members are added.
“Real dairy ice cream, made with British milk, has a great taste and a creamy texture. Nothing beats it.”
Farms who wish to take part must be NFU members and should ask for a consent form from NFU dairy adviser, Verity Richards.
Eccentric ice cream flavours are common to the point of cliche today, but Ben and Bill’s Chocolate Emporium has served scoops of ice cream with real lobster meat since 1988.
According to company lore, the proprietors invented the flavour either to prove to a patron that their ice cream was truly homemade, or in response to a customer quipping that the Maine parlour’s menu offered every flavour but lobster. Either way, the concept has proven its worth. Decades later, people still pass the cartoonish lobster statue at the emporium’s door on their way in to order the somewhat infamous flavour. The shop is located in Bar Harbor, an island town that is home to beautiful Acadia National Park. So during high season, parlour employees busily serve scoops to tourists who want to cap a day of hiking, whale watching, and lobster-roll eating with more New England fare.
Not everyone enjoys the combination, but plenty of patrons describe lobster and ice cream as pairing pretty well: The buttery vanilla matches the buttery lobster (which repudiates the belief that seafood and dairy should not mix). But if you order it and aren’t a fan, fear not: If you avoid the chunks of lobster, you’re just another person enjoying vanilla ice cream on a sunny day.
Swedish furniture giant Ikea has announced it will be adding vegan soft serve ice-cream to its bistro menu writes plantbasednews.org
Taking to Instagram to share the news, it revealed that the frozen treat should be on offer by Summer 2019.
The brand shared a picture of ice-cream, captioning it: “100 percent plant-based, 100 percent delicious. Today we are sharing our ambitions to introduce plant-based ice cream to the IKEA Bistro.”
The store’s chefs are already working on the product, according to the post which said: “The development has started and we aim to bring this alternative to the dairy-based soft ice to IKEA Bistros in Summer 2019.”
Ikea has already committed itself to serving more vegan options in its cafe, trialling a vegan option which is available in some European locations, and set to launch in the US next year.
Speaking about the menu developments, Michael La Cour, Managing Director at Ikea Food, said: “Every year, 660 million people enjoy the Ikea Food offer, and we see this global reach as an opportunity as well as a responsibility to serve food that is good for people and the planet.
“With the new veggie hot dog, we can inspire and enable customers to choose a plant-based, more sustainable option at an affordable price.”
Dominique Ansel Bakery in London is serving a watermelon ice cream that comes in a real slice of watermelon, report Business Insider.
The soft serve, called What-a-Melon, is made with fresh watermelon juice and even has ‘seeds’ made of dark chocolate.
“We source our watermelon from Italy,” said Executive Pastry Chef James Clarke. “We found it to be the ripest, juiciest watermelon. We store it cold, keep it fresh, and we get daily deliveries.”
The soft serve is made with only watermelon, lime juice, and sugar.
It first launched at Dominique Ansel Bakery in Tokyo in 2017. You can get one in London for £6.50
Likely due to the heatwave across Britain this Summer, ice cream is a hot news story in 2018. Long may the great Summer weather continue.