"national ice cream month" news and stories

Photo: Molly Watson/The Dinner Files

This cloudy drift of buttermilk ice cream, made and photographed by Molly Watson of the Dinner Files, looks less like dessert than something out of a lactose-fueled dream. While it was undoubtedly delicious, it's so serene and ethereal that eating it seems almost sacrilegious.

National Ice Cream month starts today, however, and its devotees -- and really, anyone -- will have difficulty resisting a treat that looks this luminous and fresh. Indeed, the notion of spooning it straight from that frozen metal bowl is enough to inspire dreams of its own.

[Via The Dinner Files]

Gabrielle Carbone, co-owner of the Bent Spoon Photo: Eating in Translation/Flickr

Since Gabrielle Carbone and Matthew Errico opened the doors of Princeton, N.J.'s The Bent Spoon in 2004, their ice cream shop has become synonymous with high-quality, imaginatively flavored ice cream, winning over countless customers with flavors like cardamom-ginger, dark chocolate habanero and mint julep. Called one of the Top Nine Ice Cream Places in America, it's one of a growing number of ice cream shops that have shaken off the shackles of vanilla, chocolate and strawberry to bring frozen dairy into the brave new world of small-batch, artisanal production and top-shelf organic and seasonal ingredients.

As we're entering the height of ice cream season (though true aficionados would argue that ice cream has no season), and with National Ice Cream Month around the bend, we turned to Carbone for a primer in All Things Ice Cream.

What makes good ice cream?
Oh man. You know, it kind of boils down to good ingredients. You can make good ice cream hands down if your dairy and eggs are good. The organic yolks we use are bright orange and creamy, and our dairy is hormone-free. It's great if the recipes are good, but if you start with good ingredients, you end up with good stuff.

Oyster ice cream, bourbon-vanilla ice cream swirled with sea salt and Dolly Madison, after the jump.

OK, now this is getting rather specific, eh?

It's not National Ice Cream Day (though it is National Ice Cream Month), it's National Peach Ice Cream Day. So, if you don't like peaches than you're out of luck and you have to eat broccoli all day long.

This is timing that actually makes sense. Sometimes you don't know why a certain holiday falls on a certain day or in a certain season, but it's summer so having a day set aside for an ice cream flavor seems right, and peaches are a summer fruit and sound awfully refreshing.

Here's a Peach Ice Cream recipe from TexasCooking .com, and here's one from AllRecipes.

P.S. This past Sunday was National Ice Cream Day??? How the heck did that go by unnoticed?