Memorial Day has come and gone, taking us to Summer – the high season for ice cream!

Sure, we eat some ice cream during the rest of the year, but summer cries out for a refreshing, indulgent, somewhat messy and totally delicious ice cream parlor scoop. Everyone has a preferred presentation: cone or cup, straight up or served with sauce, simple flavor or innovative mix, hard or soft. You can’t beat it on a warm summer day!

More that 1.5 billion gallons of ice cream are consumed every year in the U.S. The midsection of the country has the heaviest consumption, but we’re doing our part in the Northeast. Most ice cream is made by large producers and sold in supermarkets and national chains, but high quality regional brands like Ben and Jerry’s (when they first started in Vermont) or Farmer’s Cow in Connecticut have loyal followings. Vanilla is the most popular nation-wide.

There are a number of local outlets for ice cream – both scooped and soft serve, each with their faithful partisans. Sweet Ashley’s on East Ave. at the corner of Van Zant is the only one making hard ice cream from scratch, as far as I know. The ice cream parlor at Sarah’s Flowers on Main Ave. features the premium Longford Brand. Scoops is the center of ice cream life in Wilton. Mr. Frosty’s on First St. is a Norwalk mainstay for soft serve, as well as hard ice cream and all manner of frozen confections. Stew Leonard’s, with its battery of soft serve machines right by the entrance, is a major player in the local ice cream scene.

Ice Cream Chef Steve Tyminski is the driving force behind Sweet Ashley’s. He opened the shop 23 years ago (named after his daughter) and has been serving premium ice cream with innovative flavors ever since. His rich ice creams (16% butterfat) are made right in the shop every day.

As in the rest of America, vanilla is the most popular flavor at Sweet Ashley’s, but at any given time there are more

Flavors at Sweet Ashley’s

than 30 flavors offered from a repertoire of over 60. Grape Nut (a New England Favorite), Rum Raisin, Strawberry Cheesecake, and Coconut Chip round out a changing cast of characters in the top five.

Steve is always up for trying something new, getting ideas from his customers, and partnering with local businesses in competitions to generate new flavor ideas. Some recent successes have been: Salty Turtle (a contest winner) – vanilla ice cream with salted caramel swirl, fudge swirl, and salted pecans; Squad Car – espresso ice cream with chunks of donuts (chocolate glazed and powdered) finished with a fudge swirl; and Tazmanian Devil – vanilla ice cream with raspberry swirl and dark chocolate chips (I have to get some). Notice the common thread of chocolate accents in all three – Yum!

This is a good time for some definitions to explain the sometimes confusing naming of frozen dairy desserts:

• Ice Cream – fat content more than 10%, up to 16% for super premium.
• Ice Milk or Lo-Fat – less than 10% fat content.
• Frozen Custard (popular in the mid-west) – at least 10% fat and made with egg yolks, similar to Italian Semifreddo.
• Gelato – an Italian-style ice cream with lower fat and less air whipped in to keep a creamy texture.
• Sherbet – 1 to 2 % fat.
• Soft Serve – generally lower in fat, 3% to 6%, with more air whipped in to keep it soft.
• Sorbet – has no dairy products.

Mr. Frosty’s for a soft serve dip cone and much more.

I like to get a cup of hard ice cream – Peanut Butter Cup, Black Raspberry or Fudge Swirl. No nuts please! Once or twice a summer, I crave a soft serve chocolate dip cone. It’s best if I’m outside for this messy business; eating in haste to keep ahead of the melting ice cream, licking the sticky drips running down onto my hands and chasing bits of chocolate dropping off. The cone can’t be slowly savored, but the experience can.

Home made is another option. When I was a kid, we had a hand cranked machine that would be filled with snow, ice and rock salt while we kids cranked. It was delicious, but I couldn’t understand why we were making ice cream in the winter. These days the process is much easier thanks to electric machines with a tub kept in the freezer to supply the cold and electric power for cranking. Recipes abound for homemade ice cream. My wife likes to make vanilla or use local fresh fruit in season for maximum flavor. Making ice cream is a fun family project with rewarding results. Kids (of all ages) love it.

Frozen yogurt is a topic for another day. There are several popular soft serve chains with creative toppings. It’s almost as good as ice cream, and you can feel righteous while eating it, but I prefer the real thing.

Take some time for ice cream. It’s not summer without it!