Barry White while rolling around in satin sheets with a summerbreeze blowing tho

Tag : satin slipper

milk fat vanilla along with lots of real lemon juice and zest.While its flavour was beautiful, what really killed me was thetexture: so smooth, it was the ice-cream equivalent to listening toBarry White while rolling around in satin sheets with a summerbreeze blowing though an open window.
This got me thinking. Ice cream is a kind of magic. It's the WonderTwins of the culinary world, having the ability to take on the formof scoop or stick, thick beverage or creamy cake. It goes fromliquid to solid, and then back to liquid again with barely amoment's notice. And the best part is, during summer you're allowedto eat as much of it as you want. That's because summertime meansice cream. And no place means ice cream more than Hamilton -- theice-cream capital of Canada.
Hamilton and Dundas not only have great tasting ice cream on offer,they've also got an unparalleled ice-cream history. There'sHewitt's Dairy Bar, a 1962 offshoot of James Hewitt's 1887 familydairy. This old-style soda fountain, with its wraparound linoleumcounter, hasn't changed much since the 1960s, nor have thesurrounding cornfields. Then there's the Westfield HeritageVillage, which rolls back the clock even further to a time ofhorse-drawn wagons and bowler hats. The Village will celebrate ahistoric ice-cream timeline that stretches from 1790 to 1920 at thefourth annual Westfield Ice Cream Festival, which runs Aug. 3 and4.
But returning to a more recent incarnation of the dairy treat,amidst walls painted in hues of chocolate sauce and lime, AlannaMinuk explains her ice cream philosophy to me: "Because we're abake shop, a lot of our products get put into the ice cream, likestrawberry rhubarb pie, cheesecake, cookie dough ? so we can makeany sort of concoction," she says. "If you're going to indulge, goall the way." I take that as an invitation to try every one of the10 varieties (from a rotating roster of 50) on offer today.
I try sponge toffee, which Minuk says Bonnie Stern loved (me, too).I take some licks of mocha almond fudge swirled with a homemadeganache. The strawberry is redolent of summer fields. Even plainold vanilla is astounding. I bite, I lick, I drip and then I licksome more. Then I get one more scoop of the lemon meringue before Ihead out the door.
It's 20 minutes later and I'm wearing a white lab coat, hair net,rubber gloves and slipper-type things to cover my shoes. Swirls ofdry-ice smoke curl around my ankles as I march down a longcorridor. And that's when I skid on a chunk of chocolate brownie."Could this day get any better?" I think as I continue walkingtowards Stoney Creek Dairy's main production floor. Steve Hunt, theplant manager, is leading me around. He says the brownie chunk Islipped on is part of the Chocolate Brownie Ripple they're runningtoday.
What started in George Dawson's garage at the back of his KingStreet home in 1929 has turned into a niche ice-cream productionplant. Stoney Creek produces for Metro, which includes the A&Pgroup of grocery stores in Ontario and the Metro chain in Quebec,as well as President's Choice gelatos and organics; they also workwith smaller, entrepreneurial groups to produce everything fromsoy-based to high-protein frozen treats. The plant is fairly smallin relation to the big dairies, such as Breyers and Nestle.Explains Hunt, "We're smaller and more flexible." Even so, "Vanillais still No. 1," he says. "You can have 50 flavours and vanillawill be half of it. And if you have two flavours, vanilla willstill be half."
I end the day at the most famous example of Hamilton's ice creamculture, Hutch's, which is attached to the Stoney Creek Dairy. Eventhough it's been here for 80 years, it doesn't look a day over 50.Cindy Frick, Hutch's current owner, is amazed by its ongoingpopularity: "I can't believe that people can eat this much icecream," she says. I take that as a personal challenge. And so I trythe chocolate fudge variety I saw them making in the plant. Andthen I try mint chocolate chip, Frick's favourite. Then it's on tothe chocolate peanut butter, because that's my favourite.
After that, I covet a teenager's chocolate sundae, and then I askhis girlfriend if I can take a picture of her banana split, just soI can get a little closer to it. A bus of seniors pulls up and Ioverhear one scooper say to the other, "Uh-oh, better get out somemore maple walnut." And then, even though I've eaten the equivalentof 14 scoops of ice cream today, I order a chocolate milkshake forthe road.
It is summertime, after all.

© National Post 2008