The dessert above is, as the title of this blog entry suggests, a savory concoction known as Candied Bacon Ice Cream. The treat is the work of author David Lebowitz (The Perfect Scoop), who concocted the frozen feast using light brown sugar, cinnamon and lots of bacon (recipe here). The combination of everyone’s favorite early morning snack and everyone’s favorite late night indulgence seems like a match made in heaven, which begs the obvious question: Would you eat it?
Later this month, we’ll be kicking off our annual holiday celebration, the 12 Days of Ice Cream. To recap for some of our new readers, the 12 Days of Ice Cream features a new blog entry every day for 12 days leading up to Christmas. What makes it fun is that each blog entry will feature an ice cream related prize, which will be given away to one commenter chosen at random from that entry. So basically, you have a chance to win a fun prize every day!
This year, we thought long and hard about what sort of prizes to give away, and we settled on gifts chosen from the popular website, Etsy. For those not familiar, Etsy is a cool website that features handmade and homemade crafts and artwork. People can create anything they want, and open a “store” on Etsy to sell their creative handiwork.
This year’s ice cream prizes are truly fun and creative. They include everything from a handmade ice cream pillow to a hand-knitted cozy sleeve to put around your pint of Turkey Hill ice cream while you’re eating it!
The first 12 Days of Ice Cream entry will be posted on December 14 and will conclude on December 25. But before the celebration begins, we’ll be posting our four finalist recipes in this year’s Ultimate Holiday Recipe Contest. Look for those entries next week and a poll on Friday to vote for your favorite.
Family means more to me than anything in the world, which is why Thanksgiving is such a special day of the year.
I’ve got a lot to be thankful for, too. As you can imagine, being raised in a big family always helped to create some fond holiday memories. My grandfather, Armor, who founded Turkey Hill nearly 80 years ago, and my grandmother, Mary, had seven children, including my father, Emerson. My father and mother, May, had five children of their own and I and my wife, Cheryl, have four. In a family that size, Thanksgivings can be hectic, but a chance to come together and share our thanks is always worth the extra effort.
But I’ve learned over the years that it’s not the size of your family that creates memories, it’s the bond you share with the people you love. That’s the real ingredient in lasting memories. And if it’s about the bond you share with the people you love, then your family can include neighbors, members of your church, even co-workers.
In that regard, I consider the many men and women who make up the Turkey Hill team to be a part of that close-knit group and I pray that each of them – and each of you – have a wonderful Thanksgiving filled with love, laughter and, most importantly, family.
Warmest Regards,
Quintin Frey
President, Turkey Hill Dairy
(Photo courtesy of Lumpy Golightly on Flickr.)
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Just a few announcements today. Enjoy!
TRIVIA ANSWERS – Congrats to Shannon S. of Tacoma, WA for being the winner of last week’s trivia contest. The answer to the trivia questions are:
The Frey family purchased the farm on which Turkey Hill founder Armor Frey first started his business from Thomas and Richard Penn.
The TV personality and entrepreneur who lived in a spacious farmhouse called “Turkey Hill” for more than 30 years is Martha Stewart.
The Turkey Hill ice cream flavor that contains Keebler Fudge Shoppe Grasshopper Cookies is Light Recipe Skinny Minty.
The answer to the crazy equation is 7.
The Philadelphia parade “invaded” by the Turkey Hill Giant Cow was the Mummers Parade and the Venice Ice flavor the announcers were eat is Raspberry.
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RECIPE CONTEST REMINDER – Only one week left to submit your recipes using either Ginger Snap ice cream or any other flavor of Turkey Hill ice cream. We’ve already broken last year’s record for recipes entries (more than 160 and counting). Check out the original blog entry for more details!
This recipe is adapted from one submitted by Cheri F. of Sinking Spring, PA during last year’s holiday recipe contest. In Cheri’s recipe, it used Egg Nog ice cream, but we chose to feature it here because you can also use other flavors of ice cream (and it sounds like a great recipe!).
It’s also simple to make… and that’s always a good thing. If anyone makes this, let me know how it turned out! By the way, the photo below isn’t a picture of this exact recipe, but it is a multi-layered ice cream cake and similar to how this might turn out.
CHOOSE YOUR FAVORITE FLAVOR ICE CREAM PIE
CRUMB CRUST INGREDIENTS & DIRECTIONS
(You can purchase a pre-made crust, but making your own is fun and easy.)
1 1/2 cups of fine crumbs from ground up graham crackers
6 tblsp melted butter (3/4 stick)
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
Mix all four ingredients and spread evenly in pie pan. Press firmly onto bottom and sides. Freeze for at least an hour before adding filling.
FILLING INGREDIENTS AND DIRECTIONS
Pack approximately half a container of your favorite Turkey Hill ice cream flavor into the shell with the back of a large spoon (you may need to let the ice cream soften before doing this). Sprinkle half a cup of crushed vanilla wafer cookies (or any cookies, if you’d like) over the ice cream. Pack the remaining ice cream (perhaps a different flavor than the first) over the crushed cookies, mounding it in the center. Sprinkle lightly with more crushed cookies. Freeze for at least 2 hours prior to serving. When ready to serve, top with whipped cream if desired.
The two factors that contributed to ice cream’s meteoric rise in availability in the mid 19th century was the invention of machines to make ice and the lower cost of sugar. Prior to this period, ice was harvested from natural sources and sugar was a costly luxury item. Thankfully, we found a way to make both factors more readily available and affordable. Otherwise, we’d all be paying $45 for an ice cream cone today.
It’s time for another edition of ice cream trivia. Considering this month’s Thanksgiving holiday, we thought we’d continue the turkey day theme with trivia questions dedicated to Turkey Hill. Send your responses to icecreamjournal@gmail.com or use the Ask Ernie link on the right. Three people who answer all the questions correctly will be chosen at random to receive some free Turkey Hill ice cream. Good luck, and feel free to use the internet to find the answers!
1. From whom did the Frey family purchase the farm on which Turkey Hill founder Armor Frey first started his business?
2. What TV personality and entrepreneur lived in a spacious farmhouse called “Turkey Hill” for more than 30 years?
3. Which Turkey Hill ice cream flavor contains Keebler Fudge Shoppe Grasshopper Cookies?
4. What’s the total of the following equation (sorry about the math): The year a Turkey Hill delivery truck “took an unguided trip into the pond out back” MINUS the year Glenn, Emerson and Charles Frey purchased Armor Frey’s budding Turkey Hill business PLUS the number of dollars in cost of a Turkey Hill ice scraper MINUS the total number of Venice Ice flavors currently available according to the Turkey Hill website.
5. Which Philadelphia parade did the Turkey Hill Giant Cow “invade” according to a video posted online AND which flavor of Venice Ice are the parade announcers eating while they watch the Giant Cow?
By the way, the answer to which story was fake from last week’s wacky ice cream news is “Whose Got the Sprinkles?” (the one about the ice cream truck accident in Manchester, England). Which means the following stories are true: Yes, there is an ice cream being developed to help patients undergoing chemotherapy; Yes, an 8-year-old boy did get lost and was found indulging himself in the ice cream aisle of his local grocery store and; Yes, a Missouri drug store really is selling ice cream for 5 cents a scoop!
Reading, as they say, is fundamental. (Or FUNdamental, according to the posters you may see in many elementary schools.) Speaking of reading and fun, an elementary school principal in Plattsmouth, Nebraska wanted to reward his students for logging 13,410 minutes of reading in the Scholastic Reading Program, so he let 15 young scholars, whose names were chosen at random, turn him into a human ice cream sundae. Check out the photo below, courtesy of The Plattsmouth Journal and photographer Brent Hardin and the complete story here. Something tells me if our bosses let us turn them into human ice cream sundaes, we’d all be reading a lot more too!
You don’t realize how much weird ice cream-related news there is until you start combing through the archives of the Internet for it. Not old stuff, either. I’m talking about recent weird news. As always, three of the stories below are 100 percent true and one was made up by the Turkey Hill team. Leave a comment with your guess about which is the frozen fake.
WHO’S GOT THE SPRINKLES? – Highway crews in Manchester, England are describing it as “a big mess” and ice cream lovers were tempted to stop their cars and grab a spoon when a frozen foods truck carrying more than 10,000 half gallon containers of ice cream overturned on a highway just outside the city. No one was injured in the accident, but it did send half of the truck’s frosty cargo tumbling out onto the three-lane road and bring traffic to a standstill until the melee could be cleared.
THE MIRACLE DESSERT – Researchers at New Zealand’s University of Auckland have developed an ice cream with two active dairy ingredients that combine to address the unpleasant side effects of chemotherapy. The helpful treat, called ReCharge, is available in strawberry flavor and is being tested with cancer patients in six New Zealand cities.
LOST AND FOUND – An 8-year-old Australian boy who disappeared from his bedroom in the middle of the night was found a few hours later pretty much where’d you’d expect to find a missing 8-year-old. Melbourne police picked the barefoot boy up at 3:50 am after he’d wandered into a 24-hour grocery store and began helping himself to some chocolate ice cream in the frozen treats aisle of his local grocery store. The child was reunited with his parents a short time later.
IT’S LIKE 1935 ALL OVER AGAIN! – In an effort to bring the old days back to life (and more customers through the door), a drug store in Ava, Missouri has set up an old fashioned soda fountain and has begun selling ice cream for five cents a scoop (limit three scoops per person). As expected, most of the fountain’s customers are kids from a nearby school who are anxious to put their allowance to good use.
Last week, Lancaster County’s local NBC affiliate, WGAL-TV, stopped by the Dairy to tape a story for the nightly news about how it’s “business as usual” for Turkey Hill despite the current economic times. That’s right, as you’ll see in the story, we’re still hiring and doing quite well thanks to our great customers.
The story shows a lot of behind-the-scenes action at the Dairy, including the production of our newest Limited Edition holiday ice cream, Ginger Snap. You might also notice in the story that the names below some of the people are incorrect. The man they say is Ernie Pinckney is really Eric Rotz, and the man they call Eric Rotz is, of course, Ernie Pinckney. That’s a shot of Ernie below from the story (check out the full video here). He loves this kind of stuff!
P.S. – Some of you are asking how we’re judging the recipes in our Ultimate Holiday Recipe Contest. It’s a good question. Here’s how it’ll work:
We’ll review all the entries and determine four finalists (two from each category) based on the creativity of the recipe, simplicity (not too easy, not too hard) and the overall appetite appeal of the recipe. Once we have our four finalists, we will personally prepare the finalist recipes in order to take photographs. Then each finalist recipe and photo will be published on the Ice Cream Journal in its own blog entry from December 7-10. On December 11, we’ll open a poll on the blog and readers will have one week to vote for their favorite recipe. On December 18, we’ll announce our winner!
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If you’ve got a technical question about the ice cream making process or some other inquiry about the nuances of America’s favorite treat, chances are Ernie has the answer. He might not be able to answer all questions, but he’ll try his best and some may be featured on the Ice Cream Journal.
Click here to contact Ernie
