Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream Factory Tour

Tons of photo ops at the Ben & Jerry's factory

Visiting the Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream factory has been at the top of my list of must-see food factory tours. Available in 35 countries, I hope that you've been one of the many folks around the world to enjoy their frozen delights with the catchy names. My hubby is an ice cream purist. He prefers vanilla unsullied with any sort of mix-ins. I, on the other hand, enjoy my ice cream fully loaded with chunks of deliciousness in every scoop. Ben & Jerry's is exactly the style I crave. Add in their support of social justice issues, and it's a product that I can willingly splurge on. (Actually, Ben & Jerry's is now owned by the international conglomerate Unilever who also produces Wall's, Good Humor, Klondike, Breyers, Streets, and 和路雪 ice cream. But I will continue to pretend that it's 2 hippie dudes mixing up ice cream in the Green Mountains of Vermont.)

A few of the flavors created by Ben & Jerry's

Ben & Jerry's got its start in 1978 after they spent $5 on a ice cream making correspondence course from Penn State. Now, it's manufactured worldwide with factories in Nevada, Ontario, Italy, the Netherlands, and Tel Aviv. While I'm not sure if any of those locations offer public access, the one in Vermont welcomes crowds of people with open arms. The factory is conveniently located only one mile off of Interstate 89 in the town of Waterbury.

Ben & Jerry's posters from around the globe

If you visit, the first thing you should do is go inside and get a ticket for a factory tour. That looooooong line outside? It's for the Scoop Shop. Tickets must be purchased in-person for a same-day tour and are available on a first-come, first-serve basis. Arriving mid-afternoon in the height of the summer tourist season, we had to wait an hour until our tour started, but I noticed that later in the day, the wait was only 30 minutes. Luckily, there is plenty to keep families busy while they waited.

The air around the factory smells like creme brulee... until the wind shifts, and then there's hints of cow manure.

Head up the hill behind the factory to the Flavor Graveyard. It's quite amusing to wander around and read all the epitaphs on the tombstones. I had a strange moment when I realized that Rainforest Crunch has been "deceased" since 1999. I thought I just kept missing it at the grocery store. The graveyard contains only a fraction of the retired flavors. There's always the possibility that one may be reformulated and reintroduced. Legend has it that Ben & Jerry's resurrected the White Russian flavor (coffee ice cream with coffee liqueur) in their Scoop Shops after multiple fans left a bouquets of flowers at its grave.

Flavor Graveyard

A small playground keeps kids entertained while waiting for a tour to start. In the summer, they also have tents with activities like free SpinArt and Tie Dying Shirts ($13, cash only). Hot dogs, chips, lemonade and bottled water are available for purchase if you're looking for something other than ice cream to eat. Small shacks showcase whatever social justice issue they're currently promoting. While we were there, posters encouraged Americans to exercise their right to vote in this important Election Year. The introduction of the new flavor, Empower Mint (peppermint ice cream with fudge brownies and fudge swirls), celebrates that "Democracy is in Your Hands!"

A few months ago, there was a small batch, unofficial flavor called Bernie's Yearning after the Vermont senator and former Democratic candidate who Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield supported. Pints of Bernie's Yearning have a solid layer of chocolate representing the gains of the wealthy 1% that you have to break through to get to the plain mint ice cream beneath it that symbolizes the rest of us.

It's a craft project AND a souvenir.

The main building has a timeline history of the company along with maps of their global locations and international signs. The souvenir store contains everything from clever T-shirts ("I like to Spoon") to ice cream-flavored lip balms and pints of faux spilled, melted ice cream.

Finally, it was time for our 30 minute tour to start! It begins with a movie tracing the history of Ben & Jerry's back to 1978 when they opened their first Scoop Shop in a renovated gas (petrol) station in Vermont. To celebrate their first anniversary, they held a Free Cone Day, a tradition which still goes on each year. By 1980, they started packaging their ice cream in pints and selling it at stores. In 2000, they sold the company to Unilever but created an independent Board of Directors to maintain their brand identity and social mission.

The next stop on the factory tour is the mezzanine with windows looking down over the production floor. The guide pointed out the different machines and told us what each one did. While tours are offered 7 days a week, manufacturing only occurs from Monday to Friday. Since most of the the ice cream creation occurs hidden within enclosed tanks and pipes, the only big difference on weekends is that you won't see the "putting on the lids" machine in action or people walking around below you on the factory floor. After the ice cream is packaged, it goes off to the freezing tower to bring it down to the correct temperature for storage and shipping. The tower is too cold for humans, so we watched a short clip of the conveyor belt in action instead of seeing it first hand. Photography is not allowed in the movie theater or the mezzanine.

Welcome to the Flavor Room

The last portion of the tour is the Flavor Room, a workshop where wacky flavors are thought up by "Screamers." Be sure to read the labels on the containers behind the glass. There are crazy ingredient labels like Rainbow Ends and I Dunno. Most of the flavors created in this room are edible, experimental brainstorming and never see mass production. If you're lucky — or unlucky, depending on the flavor — the trial flavor will be part of the Samples that day. On the day we were there, Broccoli and Cheese was what the Screamers were offering up. Bleh! While one brave sole did try the cup of yellowish ice scream with green flecks, the rest of the tour group opted for the safer choice, Triple Caramel Chunk (caramel ice cream with a swirl of caramel and fudge covered caramel candies).

The tour has a sweet ending with a small scoop of the ice cream of the day.

After the tour, we got in line at the Scoop Shop. We had plenty of time to contemplate the menu while we were queuing. With 30 flavors of ice cream, 3 flavors of Greek Fro Yo, 4 sorbets and one non-dairy offering, it's a much bigger selection than what's in pint-size cartons at my local grocery store. The nearest Scoop Shop to my home is almost 100 miles away, so I was especially excited to be spoilt for choice. You can ask for tiny samples if you want to try a flavor before committing to it. I settled on a scoop of Empower Mint and a scoop of Coconut Seven Layer Bar.

The most impressive item on the Scoop Shop menu is the Vermonster Sundae made with 20 scoops of ice cream, four sliced bananas, three cookies, a large brownie, hot fudge or caramel or both, ten spoonfuls of chopped walnuts, whipped cream and an assortment of toppings like sprinkles and M&Ms. Weighing between 4-9 pounds, it's all served in a giant plastic tub and recommended for sharing. No way was I going to order one for my family, and I did not see anyone else eating it either. What a sight that would have been!

Full details about the Ben & Jerry's Factory Tour in Waterbury, Vermont can be found on their website. Tour tickets are $4 adults, $3 seniors, and kids 12 years and under are free. Cash, credit cards, and checks accepted at the tour ticket counter.

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It’s Your Turn, Link Up Your Newest Travel Inspiration

I've joined up as one of the co-hosts of Weekend Travel Inspiration.

1. Link one of your inspirational travel photos or stories to this post by adding your info.
2. Copy and paste our badge and a link to this page.
3. Visit some of the other wonderful travel bloggers, read their posts, and leave a comment.  It would be great if you could comment on 2-3 posts.
4. Tweet it and include this hashtag. #wkendtravelinspiration .
5. Follow all the hosts of Weekend Travel Inspiration who are working hard to spread the word on what wonderful work travel bloggers are doing.
6. Don’t forget to check out my amazing co-hosts and their pages: Reflections Enroute, The Crowded Planet, ContentedTraveller, Albom Adventures, Safari 254, and FamiliesGo.

I've also joined with the following linkups. Check them out for more around-the-world travel inspiration.

• Travel Photo Thursday on Budget Travelers Sandbox, Budget Travel Talk, Tanama Tales and Rachel's Ruminations.
• Weekend Wanderlust on A Brit and a Southerner, Justin + Lauren, A Southern Gypsy, Eat Work Travel and One Modern Couple
• The Weekly Postcard on Travel Notes and Beyond
• Monday Escapes on Packing My Suitcase

Ice Cream is the Cure for Jet Lag

I am overwhelmed right now trying to get the kids registered in three different schools. I've been flipping through my travel photos for the last hour trying to figure out what to write about this week. I'm in one of those dour moods where nothing looks interesting. Tibet? Not interesting. Disney World? Not interesting? Stuffing my mouth with snack food? Totally interesting.

Instead of getting up and raiding my pantry which is what I really want to do, I'll just reminisce about a fabulous ice cream treat I had in Rome. (Pssst... I actually always want ice cream, even when things are going perfectly fine.) Specifically, I am dreaming of tartufo from Tre Scalini in Rome's Piazza Navona.

Mystery Fruit #5: Dragonfruit (and making it into Sorbet)

Any guesses why it's called Dragonfruit?

Oddly, the first time I encountered dragonfruit was in my company's lunchroom back in Texas. My friend's husband was a top chef in Austin, and a potential supplier brought him a basket of tempting goodies. That's how my friend showed up at work one day with a pinkish fruit sporting a sticker saying, "Hi! I'm a Pitaya." When she cut into it, we were all amazed that the firm but juicy innards were generously studded with black seeds. After she sliced it up, we each enjoyed a small sliver. I wonder if my memory is failing me, because in my recollection, this pitaya had absolutely no scales and was smooth skinned.

Flash forwards more than a decade, when I saw a dragonfruit hanging out at a hotel breakfast buffet in Malaysia. This fruit is made for adding some flair to a table. Bright pink with the distinct scales that give dragonfruit its name, you can't help but notice it. I immediately thought back to the pitaya I'd had years before. How could I forget all those seeds? It's the same fruit but goes by a different name here in Southeast Asia.

When my oldest boy saw it for the first time, he nodded sagely and commented, "The rarest of all fruits." Huh?? It turns out that in the ultra-popular game Fruit Ninja, the appearance of a dragon fruit is both random and rare. Slicing it is worth 50 points and an unlocked King Dragon Blade.

Kool-aid colors but made by Mother Nature

When you slice into it in real life, you'll find flesh that's either white or a brilliant, radioactive magenta hue. The reddish-purple one is supposedly sweeter. But to be honest, the flavor doesn't really match the promise of its color. With something that vivid, you'd expect a taste that would knock your socks off. You'd expect the essence of cotton candy or baby unicorn breath or, at the very least, sweet syrupy goodness. While it's refreshing, it's actually quite bland.

It has the same texture as a kiwi. So, just scoop out the innards with a spoon and eat it up. The seeds are so small that they don't bug you at all.

Then, I was inspired to turn this fruit into a sorbet and add some oomph to its flavor. Plus, I am getting more and more obsessed with all sorts of frozen concoctions. What this dragonfruit needs is a little sweetness, the kick of fresh mint, and the subtle flavor of white wine.  When I was done, the sorbet tasted the way I'd imagined the unadulterated fruit to be. So very delicious!

Dragonfruit-Mint-White Wine Sorbet

Dragonfruit-Mint-White Wine Sorbet
2 cups water
¾ cup sugar
1 Tablespoon glucose (can substitute 2 Tablespoons light corn syrup)
Juice of 1 large or 2 medium lemons
2-3 sprigs of fresh mint
⅓ pound fresh Dragonfruit flesh cut into small pieces, no skin
½ cup white wine

Combine the water and sugar in a pot and heat on stove until sugar completely dissolves. Stir in glucose and lemon juice until dissolved. Drop in whole springs of fresh mint. Let mint steep for 5-10 minutes, tasting until the mint flavor is a little stronger than suits you. Remove mint and cool liquid completely in the refrigerator.

In a blender, puree the dragonfruit. Add in the cooled liquid mixture and white wine. Blend everything up. If the mixture is too warm, put it in the refrigerator to cool to 40F. (Do not skip the cooling step if you, like me, are working in a semi-airconditioned tropical kitchen.)

Transfer the mixture to an ice cream maker and freeze following the manufacturer's instructions. 

If you don't have an ice cream maker, pour mixture into a 13 x 9 inch pan and place in freezer. Every 20 minutes, take the pan out and scrape the frozen mixture with a fork until all the frozen pieces are broken into small shavings and mixed with the remaining liquid. Place back into freezer. Continue to scrape every 20 minutes and freeze until no liquid remains.

Makes about 2 cups. Eat as soon as possible as the sorbet will get progressively harder and the mint flavor diminishes.

No artificial food coloring, seriously.

Related Posts:
Mystery Fruit #1: Ciku
Mystery Fruit #2: Elixir of Immortality
Mystery Fruit #3: Passion Fruit
Mystery Fruit #4: Mangosteen

This post is part of "Foodie Tuesday" on Inside Journeys. Check it out for more delicious ideas.

Milking a Coconut and Making Ice Cream

Years before I ever suspected we were going to one day become expatriates ourselves, I devoured David Lebovitz's book, The Sweet Life in Paris, about his adventures as a well-known American pastry chef moving to a city renowned for its food scene. Afterwards, I came away thinking that a) living abroad might be fun; and b) I am too gauche to live in Paris. I still bop around Lebovitz's food blog, so I can continue daydreaming about food and European expat life. One day, I stumbled upon a Quick Coconut Ice Cream recipe that had "make this" written all over it.

When I move back to America, I think one thing I'll miss is fresh coconut milk. It really lends such a fabulous flavor to curries (I recommend Thai Choice Yellow Curry Paste) and, as I discovered, ice cream. Many wet markets here make coconut milk fresh every day, and a ¼ cup costs about US$0.30. The 4-person stand pictured below does very brisk business.

Step 1:
Cut coconuts in half with big, scary knife.



 

Step 2:
Hold coconut half against rotating grinder wheel to take off outer brown husk.

Step 3:
Throw coconut into top of machine where it goes through the shredder and drops into a big tub.

Step 4:
Gather shredded coconut into a muslin cloth or cheesecloth and bring it over to the press.

Man gathers shredded coconut in muslin cloth

Step 5:
The press squeezes down on the bag, and the coconut milk drips out into a bucket.

Step 6:
Transfer the coconut milk from the bucket to a pitcher for easy dispensing into plastic bags tied closed with a rubber band.

Fresh coconut milk

When I move back to Austin (hometown of Whole Foods Market), I suppose I'll have to just get used to buying this instead.

Not-as-fresh Coconut Milk

While I was at the wet market, I also stopped by the baking stall to pick up a package of Gula Melaka (Palm Sugar made from boiled down palm tree sap) to act as the sweetener. Before making the ice cream, I had to chop the disk into fine chunks just to speed up the process of dissolving it in the hot coconut milk.

Gula Melaka (Palm Sugar)

Palm Sugar is a a little hard to find in America, but I did see it on the shelves of the International Foods aisle at Whole Foods. A Indian or Asian market may be another source.

This Palm Sugar is much more expensive than buying it from the wet market in Malaysia.

The ice cream I made was fantastic. (The recipe is at the bottom of this post.) The tropical flavor of the coconut and the deep richness of the palm sugar had me practically licking the custard before it was cool enough not to burn my tongue. Waiting for it to chill and throw in the ice cream maker was torture. It's vegan, too, if you care about that sort of thing. I would show you a picture, but I ate it all before I could whip out my camera.

I realize that not everyone has the time to source exotic ingredients or the equipment to churn their own ice cream. Luckily, I found a place in Austin, Texas where you can get your fix. Lick Ice Cream on South Lamar makes small batch, organic ice cream using local ingredients (except for the coconut, I assume). There were three vegan coconut flavors on the menu the day we visited. For their Fresh Mint and Chocolate Chunk ice cream, I swear that they must steep fresh mint leaves in hot cream to capture that incredibly bright flavor. No peppermint extract here. A word of warning though — while my palate was delighted with the artisanal flavors, my kids were less enthralled. I think they were wishing for candy crush-ins.

Lick Honest Ice Cream — Creamy goodness in every bite

Artisanal flavors

COCONUT ICE CREAM
adapted from David Lebovitz (who adapted it from Delicious Days by Nicole Stich)
⅔ cup (160 ml) heavy cream
1 cup (250 ml) coconut milk
2 ounces (60 g) palm sugar, or ¼ cup white or unrefined cane sugar ("normal" granulated sugar)

In a medium-sized saucepan, bring all the ingredients to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer gently for ten minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat, and chill the mixture thoroughly. Once chilled, freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s directions. Makes about 1 pint.


Related Post
I Scream!!

This post is part of Friday Daydreamin' at R We There Yet Mom? and Foodie Tuesday on Inside Journeys.

I Scream!!

I scream,
You scream,
We all scream
For...
          Ais Krim

Did you know that you can speak Malay? "Ais Krim" is the Malay word for "ice cream." Both phrases are pronounced exactly the same way.

Penang is the land of perpetual summer. Every day feels like a hot, humid July morning in Houston. Cooling off with a scoop of ice cream always seems like a good idea.

Anyways, store bought ice cream is — how shall I put it? — really, really bad here in Malaysia. Sure, you can go out for Baskin Robbins and Haagen Dazs, but most of the stuff at the grocery store is simply awful or ridiculously expensive. A pint of Haagen Dazs costs about US$10. With my family of five, we would demolish that in one sitting.

Affordable but yucky

For a while, I kept trying different brands, figuring that one of them had to be decent. The flavors always seem off unless I go with something purposely artificial like Cotton Candy ice cream. The mouthfeel is usually waxy and greasy. (Those two words never seem to pop up in ice cream ads.) When I looked at the ingredients, almost all of them have some sort of fat such as palm oil as a primary ingredient. You know, because lactating cows are great sources of palm oil.

The worst offender has to be Cremo from Thailand. I scooped it into a bowl and left it out on my 86F balcony.

Freshly scooped

Unchanged after 12 minutes in the heat. How is that possible?

4 hours later - Solids sitting in a yellowish puddle. Ewwwww!

That's a little scary if you ask me. I guess that's what happens when Water is the first ingredient on the list.

Luckily, someone clued me in to the horrible situation before I moved over here, and I made sure to include an ice cream maker in my sea shipment. This person also claimed that bringing homemade ice cream to parties would increase my social standing, but none of it has made it out of the apartment so far. As soon as my shipment arrived, I got it cranking.

First up was the custard-based Vanilla Ice Cream by Alton Brown utilizing the vanilla beans I had scored during my visit to the Tropical Spice Garden. Half-and-half is non-existent here, so I had to figure out a good sub for it (equal portions partly skimmed milk and heavy whipping cream, if you're interested). After I found pasteurized eggs, I started going through my Ben & Jerry's recipes. The lack of unsweetened chocolate on the island sent me perusing the internet for a good Chocolate Ice Cream recipe that called for unsweetened cocoa powder which is readily available.

Fast forward to last week, when I found myself with an hour to kill before picking up the kids from school. I remembered that I had brought along a tin of Godiva Chocolatier Dark Chocolate Hot Cocoa mix from the Starbucks at Barnes and Noble when I moved. (If this had existed when Ma Ingalls left the Big Woods for the prairie, she would have made room for it in the wagon.) Wouldn't that make best Chocolate Ice Cream EVER??? This is what happens when I get bored. Some people dedicate themselves to Occupying Wall Street. I spend my time obsessing about ice cream.

Godiva Dark Chocolate Ice Cream
(Ais Krim Coklat Hitam Godiva)

⅔ cup Godiva Chocolatier Dark Chocolate Hot Cocoa Mix*
⅓ cup granulated sugar
3 egg yolks, beaten
2⅔ cups heavy whipping cream**
 ⅓ cup semisweet chocolate chips (I recommend Guittard)

In a large bowl, stir together cocoa mix and sugar. Add cream a little at a time while whisking. Add in beaten egg yolks and whisk until everything is well combined.

Pour into frozen ice cream maker canister and follow manufacturer's directions.

While mixture is churning, chop chocolate chips into smaller pieces. When ice cream is finished churning, transfer it into storage container and mix in the chopped chocolate chips. Allow ice cream to harden in the freezer.

* If you're one of those rare people who don't have a tin of Godiva Cocoa Mix handy, use ⅓ cup unsweetened cocoa and increase the sugar to ⅔ cup total.

** Do you want to make this ice cream less awesome artery-clogging rich? Use ⅔ cup whole milk and only 2 cups heaving whipping cream.

Mom's-in-a-Good-Mood suggestion: Bake chocolate chip cookies and make an ice cream sandwich with this concoction. Heaven!