Icecream Journal

The website eHow.com offers how-to advice on just about everything. Want to figure out how to keep your feet warm in the winter? They’ve got you covered. Need help folding those pesky fitted sheets? There are a few tips on there about that too.

One of the best parts of the website is the wealth of ice cream-related how-to information. In fact, just typing “ice cream” into the site’s search field reveals 1,300 different results. Many of the articles are recipes, but some of the others are quite fun and interesting. For instance, you’ll learn everything you ever wanted to know about:

How to plan an ice cream social (We should all plan more ice cream socials)

How to eat an ice cream cone (it starts with a careful analysis of the cone and ice cream)

How to open an ice cream parlor (of course it starts with choosing the right location)

How to make a root beer float (there’s a good chance you already know how to do this)

How to get brain freeze (for those times when a splitting headache is exactly what you need)

TODAY’S PRIZE: We’ll admit, today’s offering is a little quirky. It’s a battery-powered ice cream cone. Just load the removable inner cone with ice cream, push the button and the ice cream spins round and round. No more drips and, best of all, no need to do that whole “moving your wrist” thing to get to the other side of the cone. All we can say is, it’s about time!

Of course you knew that. But you might not have known that the United States is number two worldwide in per capita ice cream consumption. That’s right, we’re second. The good news is, we’re waaaay behind the number one country. That’s good news because if we want to take over the top spot, we’ll all need to eat a lot more ice cream to get there.

Below is a list of the top ice cream eating countries. Take note: we really should be watching out for Australia.

COUNTRY    LITERS PER CAPITA 

New Zealand     26.3
United States    18.7
Australia            17.8
Finland               13.9
Sweden              11.9
Canada                 9.5
Italy                      9.2
Ireland                 9.0
Denmark              8.7
United Kingdom  7.7

TODAY’S PRIZE: Two fun ice cream magnets (a soft serve cone and an ice cream sundae). Stick ‘em on your fridge. Stick ‘em on your car. Stick ‘em wherever they’ll stick. Except for the neighbors’ car…unless they really like ice cream.

The picture below is called “Roasted Pumpkin Ice Cream with Warm Caramel Sauce.” There’s not much we can say about it other than it looks DELICIOUS. Thanks to ChezDeniseetLaudalino over on Flickr for letting us use this incredible photo.

TODAY’S PRIZE: The Cuisipro Ice Cream Sandwich Maker. It’s kind of like a cookie cutter, except it makes ice cream sandwiches. You probably didn’t need that description. The name sort of says it all. Except it doesn’t say how awesome it is.

Here it is, Day 1 of our 12 Days of Ice Cream celebration. We were amazed at how many people visited the Ice Cream Journal yesterday. In fact, it was a record-setting day in terms of the total number of visits and comments left by all of you. We’re happy to see so many new faces and we hope to see more of you (and hear from you through your comments) throughout the next two weeks and beyond! And now, onto today’s topic, followed by today’s prize.  

Everyone has a favorite ice cream flavor. Some of us say, “It’s so hard to choose, I like them all!” That may be true, but you have to like one better than all of the others, right?

To get to the bottom of this, the International Dairy Foods Association polled a sampling of the American population and the top 15 flavors in the United States are as follows:

1. Vanilla, 29% preferred
2. Chocolate, 8.9%
3. Butter pecan, 5.3%
4. Strawberry, 5.3%
5. Neapolitan, 4.2%
6. Chocolate chip, 3.9%
7. French vanilla, 3.8%
8. Cookies and cream, 3.6%
9. Vanilla fudge ripple, 2.6%
10. Praline pecan, 1.7%
11. Cherry, 1.6%
12. Chocolate almond, 1.6%
13. Coffee, 1.6%
14. Rocky road, 1.5%
15. Chocolate marshmallow, 1.3%

As you can see, it’s pretty much a case of “vanilla versus the rest of the flavor spectrum.” Is your favorite flavor in the top 15? If not, chances are it’s one of the “other flavors” that make up the remaining 23.7%.

TODAY’S PRIZE: “Everybody Loves Ice Cream” book. We’ve got a few copies of this around the office and we all love it, so we’re sure you will, too. The book is chock full of color photos and illustrations. There’s a chapter on the history of ice cream, where to buy great ice cream, and even how to make your own ice cream.

One more day until the start of the 12 Days of Ice Cream! We can’t wait. The prizes have all been ordered and delivered. A bunch of us have already determined that that we’re going to have to buy a few extras for ourselves (the spaghetti ice cream maker on Day 3 looks like a lot of fun).

A few readers have asked about how the grand prize of one year’s supply of ice cream will be distributed to the winner. It’s a good question.

No, we won’t mail you a container of ice cream every month. We also won’t show up on your door step with an entire year’s supply of Moose Tracks stacked high on a wooden pallet (“Clean out the freezer!”). Instead, the winner will receive 52 coupons for a free container of Turkey Hill ice cream. They don’t expire until the end of the year 2010, so you can take your time using them. You can even give them away to friends if you want!

Also, the grand prize will be chosen from ALL the comments left on the Ice Cream Journal during the 12 Days of Ice Cream. So even if you don’t win a daily prize, you’ve still got a shot at the big one. Good luck!

JUST A REMINDER: After the 12 Days of Ice Cream celebration is over, we’ll resume our normal posting schedule of two or three blog posts each week. Instead of remembering to check in every day, you can sign up to have Ice Cream Journal entries email to you by entering your email address in the box in the right hand column.

The following entry was originally posted back in May, but we figured anything that proves that eating ice cream can be good for you deserves a repeat appearance on the Ice Cream Journal!  

It’s not a new development, but we found this story and had to share it. A team of neuroscientists at the Institute of Psychiatry in London have proved that eating ice cream can make you happy.

Using MRI devices and other fancy machinery, the doctors scanned the brains of people eating vanilla ice cream and found “an immediate effect“ on the parts of the brain that are activated when people are normally engaged in enjoyable activities.

Sure, the findings aren’t that surprising. Everyone knows ice cream is great, but imagine what the results might have been had the subjects been eating our Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough or Tastykake Chocolate Cupcake. Are there any volunteers for that study?

As promised, since the Ice Cream Journal turned one year old in November and that’s the “paper” anniversary, we chose one comment at random from each post in November and gave them a pair of coupons for free Turkey Hill ice cream. Here’s a list of all the winners:

Pat D. from Pomona, NY

Lee C. from Philadelphia, PA

Allan E. from Freehold, NJ

Karen S. from Westfield, NJ

Jennifer W. from Rural Hall, NC

Sheila S. from Mertztown, PA

Mary F. from Williamsport, PA

Pat D. from Pomona, NY

Dani G. from Lancaster, PA

Maryann S. from Staten Island, NY

Edwin G. from Pittsburgh, PA

Congrats again! If you’re signed up to receive e-mail updates from Turkey Hill, you can expect to get a message from us next Thursday announcing our “12 Days of Ice Cream” celebration happening here on the Ice Cream Journal. If you’re not already signed up to receive Turkey Hill updates, feel free to do so here. From time to time (about once a month), you’ll receive news and updates about various things happening here at the Dairy. You can even sign up to receive information about when Limited Edition flavors will be available.

Happy December everyone. Sure enough, as we type this a flurry of snow is coming down. Well, it was. Not anymore. It looked like December for a few minutes at least. Speaking of a new month, thanks to everyone for your input on what December’s poll should be. We got so many great ideas that it was hard to choose just one.

In the end, we settled on Adrian’s suggestion about asking everyone which Limited Edition flavor from 2007 you’d most like to see become a regular flavor. It seemed appropriate being the last month of the year and all. Feel free to let us know your thoughts on the right and/or with a comment to this post. And don’t worry, we wrote down all of the other poll ideas, so some of those will no doubt pop up in the near future.