HOW IT’S MADE
Our ice cream starts out with a 14% butterfat sweet cream vanilla base. This super premium base is rich, and pure all on its own, but it is also the perfect canvas for all of our flavors. We have so many flavors that we are pretty sure that we haven't made them all yet. Most days there are up to 17 different flavors available. They range from known favorites like fresh strawberry and mint chip to unique offerings such as lemongrass ginger, carrot cake, or "french toast". Each flavor or batch is made in small quantities (about 3 gallons) and when it is sold out, another takes its place. Hopefully each visit to our store is an adventure in trying new flavors and the variety of options will hit almost everyone's wants.
We are pretty picky about using quality ingredients. We prefer real over artificial; concentrates versus extracts; fresh baked over bought; and we love using local ingredients whenever possible. We feel that each batch is an evolution and very rarely do we ever completely sign off on a recipe, in fact out of the hundreds of flavors created at Ivanna Cone, only about 30 recipes are actually written down and even then we may not follow them!
Creating yummy, exotic, whimsical, luxurious, and satisfying ice cream is such an amazingly awesome art form that we sometimes get a little carried away with enthusiasm. We also have lighter options that include ice milks, sherbets, and intense, dairy-free sorbets.
At Ivanna Cone, we make all of our lovely ice creams, milks, sherbets, and sorbets in two White Mountain barrel freezers. Our "factory" is not hidden away in the back room, but all production takes place just inside the front door.
The 20-quart ice cream makers use the old-fashioned salt and ice layering to freeze the ice creams. During a summer afternoon, we use about 400 pounds of ice and about 40 pounds of salt. We ensure a superior texture by slowly churning each batch. The slow freezing results in very little air (overrun is a fancy term) in our ice cream. After taking such care with ingredients we would hate to ruin it by having the ice cream taste like fluffy air.
Each batch is then quickly frozen down to -20F. Our flash freezer is named "Lucy" and we let the ice cream hang out in Lucy until the next day, then we bring it out for scooping. This "super freezing" gives the ice cream a longer shelf-life, and cuts down on any loss of quality while it is waiting to be picked for scooping by hungry ice cream lovers.