vermontliving

For decades, people have associated Ben and Jerry’s ice cream with Vermont.  While Ben and Jerry developed and started selling ice cream out of a tiny Burlington location, the ice cream in recent years is owned and managed by the mega-corporation Unilever. I grew up eating Ben and Jerry’s ice cream.  The long deceased “Dastardly Mash” was my all-time favorite.  Since the Unilever takeover, I’ve found that the ice cream lacks the same richness it once had.  It’s not as creamy; it’s not as sinful and certainly lacks the same appeal. 

Enter a new, independent ice cream company, Island Ice Cream.  Island Ice Cream is everything Ben and Jerry’s once was.  One bite and you feel the calories packing onto your hips and thighs.  Two bites and you know you won’t stop until the pint is finished.  After the pint’s gone, you regret that you’ve eaten far more than your should have and immediately jump on the treadmill to make up for your weakness!

I’ve converted to Island Ice Cream when I need a sugary treat.  It’s amazing, though harder to find.  Take a drive through the Islands (Lake Champlain) and stop by the scoop shop for a decadent treat.  Island Ice Cream contains very few ingredients:  cream, cane/beet sugar, corn syrup, egg yolks, and the stabilizers carob bean gum, locust bean gum and carrageenan.  For those who don’t want to indulge in too much fat, Island Ice Cream offers decadent sorbets crafted from fruit puree, sugar, water and stabilizers.  It is made in small batches so that poor quality is never an issue. When at all possible, Island Ice Cream only uses organic and local ingredients.  You will find maple syrup in the Vermont Maple Walnut ice cream.  Strawberries are harvested at area berry farms.  Sure the ice cream is more expensive (around $5 per pint), but the taste and high quality make it a luxurious treat! Sold in hand packed pints, Island Ice Cream is not easy to find.  The company plans to keep it that way.  They have no intention on becoming a huge industry because they realize that would interfere with their life and change the quality of their ice cream.  It definitely has that homemade taste that I love. You can purchase Island Ice Cream from their scoop shop on Route 2 in Grand Isle or at a few stores in Franklin and Chittenden County. 

The complete list of stores is found on their Web site at: 

http://www.islandhomemadeicecream.com/ 

There are dozens of flavors:

Black Raspberry

Blueberry-Raspberry Sorbet

Butter Pecan

Cake Batter

Chocolate Supreme

Coconut

Coffee Chip

Cookie Dough

Cookies ‘N’ Cream

French Vanilla

Fresh Strawberry

Key Lime Sorbet

Mango Sorbet

Milky Way

Mint Chocolate Chip

Orange Sherbet

Pink Grapefruit Sorbet

Raspberry Sorbet

Strawberry Sorbet

Vermont Maple Walnut  

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