Getting Your Licks In: A tasting tour of ice cream shops that make their own
A tasting tour of ice cream shops that make their own
Friday, July 4, 20081
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As American as apple pie?
Make that "as American as ice cream." On one front, at least, the United States remains the undisputed global leader: We eat more ice cream than any other country in the world, roughly 23 quarts of frozen desserts per capita every year.* That means that the average citizen downs the equivalent of 180 cones annually -- or a cone every other day.
So on this July 4, as National Ice Cream Month begins, we're taking a look at ice cream that's as down-home as it gets, short of that time-honored Fourth of July tradition, churning your own. A Hampshire Life tasting crew -- that would be me and two of my children, each with 20-plus years of experience in the field -- visited six Hampshire County shops that make ice cream in-house. We sampled two flavors at each spot -- chocolate, which we decided would be our "control," and the shop's most popular specialty flavor, as suggested by the counter person. At a few places we added a wild card -- a third flavor that just sounded good to us.
--View an interactive map of Hampshire Life's ice cream sites.
Specialty ice creams are goodie-filled, often whimsically named flavors -- like Three Geeks and a Redhead from Bart's in Amherst, or Barnyard Blast at McCray's in South Hadley. The real best-seller, of course, is vanilla, because it's the foundation of most sundaes. There are some people who order vanilla in a cone, but one area ice cream shop owner observed that they always look a little embarrassed, as if they're lacking in imagination, or a sense of adventure.
Two of the local ice cream spots are located on dairy farms, with all the pluses (a genuine back-to-nature experience) and minuses (a genuine back-to-nature aroma) that that setting delivers. In fact, their ice cream is made from the same mixes that every ice cream shop uses, provided by big companies like Guida or Garelick or Hood (although each farm does make a point of buying its mix from the same company it sells its milk to). The mix contains milk and cream that's been pasteurized and homogenized, plus stabilizers and emulsifiers, and makes it possible for small operations to turn out consistent ice cream. Still, the ice cream shops customize their mixes -- specifying the percentage of butterfat, for instance -- and have their own techniques for freezing ice cream, and their own recipes for flavoring it. That's why every chocolate we sampled tasted different, and felt different in our mouths.
One more thing: It's hard to remember the days when vanilla, chocolate and strawberry ruled, and butter pecan was about as exotic as flavors got. Nowadays every supermarket brand offers ice cream packed with all sorts of designer chips and chunks and cookie crumbs. We can thank one man for that: Steve Herrell, who started the mix-in trend in the 1970s in Somerville, and who since 1980 has presided over his ice cream empire from the basement of Thornes Marketplace in Northampton.
A T-shirt sold at Mt. Tom's Homemade Ice Cream in Easthampton has some timely advice: "Life Is Short. Eat Ice Cream."
Consider it your patriotic duty.
NOTE: At each ice cream shop we ordered small (but not kiddie) cones. "Small" is subjective, of course, so we've indicated how each place defines it. Keep that in mind if you compare prices. All the prices include tax, by the way.
BART'S HOMEMADE
103 N. Pleasant St., Amherst
www.bartshomemade.com
Small cone (4 ounces): $2.72
Forget Brangelina. The Bart's Homemade ice cream shop in Amherst has its own celebrity, Bartalina, a comely soft-sculpture cow that greets customers the moment they grab hold of the brass ice cream cone-shaped door handle and walk inside.
Bartalina has been in the store since day one, says owner Tina Harding, and these days she's in a glass case, like a museum piece, because of her delicate constitution: pantyhose over a poseable wire frame. But still, she's a reminder of where ice cream comes from.
In the case of Bart's, that's from cows on a hormone-free diet. Harding bought Bart's from Barbara Fingold and Gary Schaefer three years ago, and gets her ice cream from their Greenfield wholesale operation (Bart's ice cream is also served at more than 50 other area spots). Right now Fingold has to go to New York for that hormone-free mix. But soon local dairy farms may be supplying it, if plans for a new processing facility at Bart's Greenfield plant pan out.
The Amherst Bart's has 30 flavors on hand at a time, with the biggest-selling specialty flavors Chunky Chocolate Mousse (lots of chocolate, and a dash of raspberry) and Three Geeks and a Redhead (coconut ice cream, coconut flakes, chocolate chunks and fudge brownies, and again, a dash of raspberry). But our server must scoop a lot of Peanut Butter Mud Pie, because that's what he suggested.
Bart's chocolate was distinctive: It had an unexpected, but refreshing, hint of mint. And while it contained a few ice crystals, it was still creamy, with just the right level of mushiness -- meaning that you can attack the cone the moment you get it. Peanut Butter Mud Pie was less of a hit with our tasting crew. It had good but not distinctive flavor, and it was a little too cold, a little too hard and a little less dense than some ice creams we sampled. We also indulged in a third flavor, Mass Mocha (get it? like the North Adams museum). Excellent coffee taste, and lots of chocolate, too, via chips, espresso chunks and fudge swirl. In short, artfully done.
BEN & BILL'S CHOCOLATE EMPORIUM
141 Main St., Northampton
Small cone (2 scoops): $4.25
Cousins Ben and Bill Coggins had a thriving candy and ice cream business in Maine when they decided, in 1991, to open a Northampton store, since Ben Coggins lives in the area. Now the Main Street outpost is one of four Ben & Bill's, with the others in seaside resort towns. And that inland location is the reason Northampton ice cream aficionados are deprived of -- or spared, depending on your point of view -- Ben & Bill's signature flavor: lobster ice cream, made with real lobster, and real butter.
"We had it once a few years back," says Trina Parsons, the shop manager. "We only made one batch."
OK, so lobster wasn't a hit in Noho; the shop does have 24 flavors, and right now, Parsons says, "chocolate peanut butter is going like hotcakes." But on the day we visited, the counter person said Snickers was the most popular specialty flavor, so we went with that.
Ben & Bill's cones were decent-sized, which at $4.25 each, they should be. The chocolate cone was good-looking -- a deep, dark, rich brown -- and the coldness/mushiness factor was just right. But it wasn't particularly creamy, and we did encounter a few chunks of ice. The Snickers had plenty of candy in it (as did the Coffee Heath we also sampled), but the verdict on both was "lots of chunks -- not enough cream."
Maybe it's not surprising that candy is king in Ben & Bill's ice cream; after all, the shop's full name is Ben & Bill's Chocolate Emporium. Try the turtles, which are just about perfect.
FLAYVORS OF COOK FARM
South Maple Street, Hadley
Small cone (2 scoops): $3.60
Those two good-looking cows gracing Flayvors of Cook Farm's roadside sign aren't just pretty faces. They're Inez and Ginger, who in their heyday were the best of their breeds -- Holstein and Jersey, respectively -- in all of Massachusetts. Now Inez and Ginger are the inspirations for two flavors at the ice cream shop that the Cook family opened next to its dairy farm in 1998. Inez is coconut ice cream with toasted coconut, chocolate chips and almonds; Ginger is -- well, you can surely figure that one out. The cows are still champions. Flayvors' ginger ice cream is a big seller. And when we asked the young woman taking our order what the most popular specialty flavor was, she didn't hesitate: Inez.
The chocolate ice cream at Flayvors was intensely flavored, and kind of cocoa-ish, we decided. It wasn't as sweet as other chocolates we had, but that was a good thing, since too sweet can be cloying. The good-sized scoop was on the soft side. The only negative was some ice crystals. As for Inez -- no complaints there. It had lots of coconut, lots of chocolate chips, lots of almonds. What's more, it was decadently creamy. No wonder Inez is Ms. Popularity.
One more thing. On the day we visited a sign outside proclaimed "It's Here! Asparagus Ice Cream." Beth Cook has gotten lots of press for that asparagus ice cream, which she calls Hadley Grass, after the legendary local crop. "It's really good," she insists. "It has almonds in it." It also has fresh asparagus, which Cook dutifully cooks before adding it to the ice cream mix. "That's all I'm going to reveal," she says of her top-secret recipe. We tried a sample spoon, and can report that it looks like pistachio, and tastes like pistachio, if pistachio were made with almonds. We didn't detect asparagus. "It's subtle," the server said.
HERRELL'S
8 Old South St., Northampton
www.herrells.com
Small cone (4 ounces): $2.85
A few years ago Bon Appetit noted that Steve Herrell had "frozen his place in history" -- ice cream history, that is. "I was the first guy to grind up a Heath bar and Reese's peanut butter cups and Oreo cookies and put it into ice cream, in 1973," Herrell says.
He started out in Somerville, but ended up in Northampton, where he's occupied the same spot in the basement of Thornes Marketplace since 1980 (he's got four other locations as well). His shop keeps 38 flavors on hand, but Herrell has a repertoire of 150.
Nothing much has changed over the years. You can still see the ice cream being made right in the shop, still marvel at the towers of Reese's peanut butter cup cartons stacked high. Even the mascots, giant stuffed bears, have been in residence since opening day.
There's a reason Herrell's has lasted: Its ice cream is really good. Our chocolate cone was just average, size-wise, but everything else about it was oversized. The chocolatiness was just right; the coldness was just right; the creaminess was just right (which is to say it was extra-creamy). The Mud Pie had robust coffee flavor, lots of fudge swirl, and a good mix of cookie chunks and crumbs. "Plenty of chocolate in every bite," was the verdict. Or, put more succinctly, "Yum."
McCRAY'S COUNTRY CREAMERY
5 Alvord St., South Hadley
www.mccraysfarm.com
Small cone (4 ounces): $2.50
You get a lot of extras with a visit to McCray's. There's the ice cream stand, of course, started by owner Stephen McCray's father, Donald, when he was looking for a way to counter the falling price of milk. There are 30-some flavors of hard ice cream (not to mention a topping-laden confection called ice cream pizza), dished out in a snack-shop setting decorated with murals of cows and trees, and booths with candy-color seats. McCray's also has miniature golf. And hay-wagon rides. And a vista of Mount Tom off to the west. But the creme de la creme is a well-tended petting zoo, which opened in the early 1970s, preceding the ice cream shop by about 15 years. Visitors can ooh and aah at llamas, goats, pigs, a calf, a pony, rabbits, chickens, sheep, ducks and geese, along with peacocks that are highly obliging when it comes to posing for photos. McCray's is the perfect place to bring little kids.
McCray's chocolate was medium-dark, creamy, and spot-on, temperature-wise: It was just starting to soften as we took our first lick. When we asked for the most popular flavor, the woman behind the counter had a surprisingly old-school answer: maple walnut. While that batch was a little too cold for our taste, it had a good dose of maple, and an abundance of walnuts. The cones at McCray's are worth noting, too -- crisp and flaky, and so tasty that we didn't mind that the flakiness factor gave them a tendency to crack.
MT. TOM'S HOMEMADE ICE CREAM
34 Cottage St., Easthampton
www.mttoms.com
Small cone (5½ to 6 ounces): $3
If you're looking for an old-fashioned ice cream parlor, head for Mt. Tom's in downtown Easthampton. It's got 20-foot-high tin ceilings, a long stretch of glass-topped counter that lets you survey the flavors on hand (generally a whopping 50 at a time) and a huge selection of penny candy-style sweets in jars. There's a soda fountain with five vinyl-topped stools, and five small tables where you can enjoy your ice cream, and even play a game of -- what else? -- Candy Land.
Owner Jim Ingram, who opened the shop in 2003, is there almost all the time, making the ice cream out back. He says he likes "a good strong flavor, something that makes an impression." If a variety calls for chips or cookie pieces, he wants it to have "lots of stuff."
Mt. Tom's chocolate wasn't the chocolatiest we came across, but it was tasty and creamy (except for a faint trace of ice crystals). But the Cookie Dough was as promised: As one of my co-tasters observed, Cookie Dough ice cream sounds kind of icky, but Mt. Tom's does it right. While there was room for a few more chocolate chips, the chunks of cookie dough in the vanilla ice cream were just sweet enough (that is, "not so sweet it makes you feel sick a quarter of the way through the cone"). This cookie dough, in short, would make excellent cookies if it hadn't been co-opted for ice cream duty.
Our tour wasn't intended to rank ice creams -- after all, everyone's taste is different -- but people invariably wanted to know our favorite flavor. There were lots of candidates. But here's a clue: All three of us have headed back to Flayvors in Hadley for another round of Inez.
Margot Cleary can be reached at MCleary@gazettenet.com.
Comments
ICE CREAM
No doubt Flayvors has the finest ice cream in the valley. Melts in your mouth. Then again all ice cream melts in your mouth but this kind has much more flayvor.
Love that Inez.