National Ice Cream Month (USA)

This year sees the 24th anniversary of "National Ice Cream Month" in the United States. Instigated by the President Reagan in 1984, this great month of celebration is always July with the 3rd Sunday in July being "National Ice Cream Day".

The International Dairy Foods Association in Washington DC, which represents the US Dairy Industry as a whole ( dairy farmers, manufacturers, marketing and supply companies), is at the forefront of promoting "National Ice Cream Month" - here is their page.

Whether you're a dairy farmer, an ice cream manufacturer or just someone who loves ice cream, if you live in the US then next month is a great time for you! To celebrate in style why not:

Make Your Own Homemade Ice Cream
Choose whatever flavor seems right for the occasion. You might like to try a recipe for Nougat ice cream or a celebratory white wine sorbet. The choices are endless. Follow these links for more on popular ice cream recipes and unusual ice cream recipes for more great ideas.

Make Your Own Homemade Ice Cream Sandwiches
Here's Oliver's White Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe to make some delicious cookies and then you can sandwich between them a batch of homemade chocolate ice cream or vanilla ice cream. Whatever you do, enjoy it!

Ice Cream Flavors

My last Blog post about The Ultimate Ice Cream Sundae was a good example of the wonderful "variety" you can experience with ice cream .... but it doesn't end there. There is probably a greater range of flavors in ice cream than any other food. Commercial ice cream makers have have developed this side of their ice cream products enormously in recent years and competition in the flavor stakes runs high. A few examples of this include:

• Ben & Jerry's Black & Tan ice cream (a cream stout ice cream swirled with chocolate ice cream)


• Baskin-Robbins' Penguin Swirl ice cream (mixed Berry ice cream swirled with Tutti Fruiti ice)


• Dreyers' Limited Edition flavors


• Häagen-Daz's Cinnamon dulce de leche ice cream

With homemade ice cream of course you can enter a whole new world of flavor experience and experimentation. Invention is easy - just take something you like and try it in an ice cream recipe - eg. marmalade (here's my marmalade ice cream recipe).

Using a basic custard or cream base you can add almost anything, although the consistency and sweetness of what you add will affect the texture of the ice cream you produce and its freezing capacity. That's why I use the word 'experimentation' - it can take time to get it right when being adventurous! Also anything citrus or acidic is not likely to work well with a custard/cream base so better to try it in a sorbet recipe - a good example is my white wine sorbet recipe.

Despite the many hundreds of ice cream flavors we can either buy or make for ourselves, we still seem to go for the old favorites - yes, we're talking about vanilla and chocolate ice cream! These still rank as the 2 most popular in the world ... and I think always will.