This month’s poll is simple, though the choice in real life may not always be. When you visit your local ice cream shop (which, as an ice cream lover, you really should be doing more often…remember our New Year’s resolutions?), are you more of a cup person or a cone person? It’s a valid question. Some of us are strictly one or the other and some of us kind of go back and forth depending on our mood.

You’ll also notice in our poll that we’ve broken down the “cone” category into the two main families of cones: sugar (or waffle) and wafer (sometimes referred to as a “cake” cone). The sugar and waffle cones are a dense, brittle, crunchy cone. They’re almost always tall and pointy-ended, although some ice cream shops offer waffle bowls (technically not a “cone”), sometimes dipped in chocolate and other sweets.

The wafer cones, on the other hand, are much different. These are the light, airy, flat-bottomed ones you probably remember from your childhood. The flat bottom comes in handy when you want to take break and put your cone on a table or a leather car seat. Most soft serve ice cream is served up in a wafer cone. These are also the type of cone you’re most likely to see being sold in boxes at the grocery store.

One of the most important ingredients in ice cream is, not surprisingly, the cream. But cream has a tendency to float in milk or other liquid mixtures because it’s lighter and it doesn’t always like to play by the rules.

That’s where the homogenizer comes in. The homogenizer is one of the most powerful machines in the Turkey Hill Dairy. It’s basically a high pressure pump (up to 2500 psi), that shears the ice cream mix at extremely high rate of speed. This process breaks the heavy cream into tiny molecules which allows them to mix freely with the rest of the ingredients in ice cream to create a smooth and creamy, finished product.

On the left is a picture of a homogenizer. It’s not much to look at, but it’s a pretty important part of the ice cream making process.

Every now and then we’ll define technical ice cream related terms in a recurring entry we call the “Ice Cream Dictionary.” This one is about inclusions. Speaking of inclusions, it looks like peanut butter cups is leading the way in this month’s poll (in the sidebar on the right). If you haven’t voted yet, feel free to sound off.

The term “inclusions” is just a technical way of referring to all those delicious, chunky, chewy things that are added to plain ice cream to create new flavors. Cookie dough, toffee bits, cherries, chocolate chips, peanut butter cups and assorted nuts are all examples of inclusions.

But as fun as it sounds, the addition of inclusions is actually a very precise process. Visual appeal, the eating quality of the inclusions when they are frozen and shelf life are all considered. Too many or too few inclusions can radically change the composition and flavor “experience” of ice cream. For that reason, we try to keep the weight of these additions to between 10 and 15 percent of the total weight of the finished product.

As for which bits and pieces go better with various ice cream flavors, some are better with vanilla ice cream and some pair better with chocolate ice cream, but it’s really just a matter of personal taste. If you have any ideas for new inclusions, we’d love to hear them. You never know if your idea might become the next Turkey Hill flavor!