The dish

Soft-serve ice cream.

Callum sent along this great New York Times article on the evolution of soft-serve ice cream:

Young chefs around the country, with fond memories of Dairy Queen stands and Mister Softee trucks, are remaking soft-serve ice cream, with epicurean takes on traditional ingredients as well as some things never before seen spiraling out of an icy nozzle, like saffron, bourbon and jalapeño flavors.

At Sketch Ice Cream, a shop in Berkeley, Calif., boysenberry, balsamic Bing cherry, white peach and strawberry are the soft serves of choice this month; vanilla is always available.

I grew up with and am still totally partial to Carvel ice cream, one of the original soft-serve ice cream vendors. Carvel’s product is technically a frozen custard because it contains egg yolks, although it turns out that it also contains mono- and diglycerides, which come from natural sources but aren’t strictly necessary for a good soft-serve product. That won’t stop me from eating Carvel, since it tastes great and still has the best texture I’ve ever had in soft-serve ice cream, but maybe it’s time for me to branch out a little.

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