From Cow to Cone: Homemade Ice Cream Sweetens Frederick County's Summer

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FROM COW TO CONE Homemade ice cream sweetens Frederick County’s summer

BY GINA GALLUCCI-WHITE

South Mountain Creamery owner Tony Brusco finds inspiration for ice cream flavors in many different places. He could see a phrase in a book that gets his imagination going, or visit a new town and be inspired by a dish he eats there to create a new flavor.

Last summer, inspiration came thanks to a number of regular ingredients being on backorder. And as a result, Brusco created one of South Mountain Creamery’s best-selling flavors, Snallygaster.

“We were running short on ice cream so I basically went into our ingredient refrigerator and pulled a bunch of different ingredients together,” he said.

He used peanut butter ice cream, added chocolate-covered pretzels and peanut butter cups then swirled in some caramel. The flavor was named for the 18th-century mystical creature believed to inhabit the creamery’s hometown of Middletown. It quickly became one of the shop’s best sellers.

“Some flavors are created that way,” Brusco notes. “Some are more crafted when we are trying to achieve a certain flavor profile that is new and different. Sometimes people will come to me and they want to make a custom flavor. It just really depends.”

The creamery has about 40 to 50 flavors in its portfolio, including “C is for Cookie,” a blend of cookie dough and cookies-and-cream ice creams, and Lemon Blueberry Pound Cake, for which they use locally grown blueberries. Peanut Butter Pie is another original flavor.

Brusco anticipates adding three more options during the summer months of this year.

“It’s my fun at the creamery where I get to be very creative and come up with new flavors,” he says. “I believe you can see that in the flavors we create.”

The ice cream process begins on the Middletown farm, where more than 500 cows are milked daily 50 yards from their processing plant. Every flavor starts with an ice cream base using a blend of milk,

cream and sugar. The recipe took Brusco seven years to perfect, based on customer feedback, taste tests, playing with the amounts of butter fat and sugar content, and working with Pennsylvania State University professors in blending recipes.

“There are a lot of things you can play with to try to get the ice cream to what you want, to the taste and the texture you are going for,” he says.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY LANIE SWANHART OF SOUTH MOUNTAIN CREAMERY

iSTOCKPHOTO.COM / JEWELEE

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The ice cream base sits in a tank for about a day after creation. “That time allows the flavors and ingredients to mingle,” Brusco says. “The next morning, we start taking the base out of the tank and we make ice cream with it.” The base goes into a commercial ice cream batch freezer. The ingredients are added to the mix and 10 to 14 minutes later, a sweet treat is born.

Some ingredients, such as blueberries or coffee beans, are added by hand.

“Our ice cream process is very manual, which is kind of nice in some ways because it allows the person making ice cream to have some kind of influence and their own little signatures on the ice cream,” Brusco says.

During the summer, demand is high for their product, so the ice cream you get could be as fresh as only 24 hours old.

“We are making ice cream five days a week,” he says.

Ice cream is available at the farm’s Karen’s Kountry Store and recently opened Downtown Frederick restaurant Hometown Harvest Kitchen. The store has 18 rotating flavors on site, while the restaurant features a scoop shop where guests may get scoops in 24 rotating flavors along with ice cream sold by the pints and

half gallons. “There are certain flavors we try to keep in the case just because they are popular and people expect them and there are other flavors that rotate out,” Brusco says. “They will be in one week and then as soon as they sell out, a different flavor might be in next week.”

For those who want locally made ice cream but don’t want to leave your car in the hot summer months, Rocky Point Creamery in Point of Rocks has a drive-through window ready to dispense cones, dishes, milkshakes and other delicious treats.

“I like drive-throughs just like everybody else,” says Owner Chuck Fry. “On the farm, we have plenty of space to do it.”

The farm began in the early 1880s with 10 Holstein cows and today the family’s fourth generation has continued the dairy tradition by milking about 175 cows each day. The creamery, featuring about 80 flavors in its repertoire, was added in 2012 to help keep the farm viable, Fry said.

After the cows have been milked, the product goes to Frederick for processing. Returning in 5 gallon bags of mix, the product is placed inside an Italian ice cream machine for six minutes.

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“When (the ice cream) comes out of the machine, it is smooth,” Fry says. “It’s the the way it should be … not icy. Sometimes you can taste ice cream that has a lower freeze point on your tongue – it gives you a brain freeze. … If it has less butter fat in it, it gives you that brain freeze. The higher the butter fat, the higher the freeze point so it doesn’t taste as cold on your mouth.”

Staff members add ingredients, such as crumbled cookies, by hand. The whole process from cow to customers is about three to four days.

“We don’t put a lot of air into our ice cream mix,” Fry notes. “You will find (our ice cream) is denser and heavier which equates to more product in a pint than typical other (brands). ...We focus on a quality product that enhances the flavor of the cow’s milk and we don’t put a lot of junk in the ice cream. The ice cream sells itself based on the flavor and creaminess and the taste on your tastebuds.”

Many of Rocky Point Creamery’s flavors revolve around a cow theme, such as “Cowfee Bean,” “Caramoo” and “Crabby Cow” (with Old Bay seasoning and caramel).

“We like to try and keep close to the cow and make a little bit of fun,” Fry says. “Our logo has a cow licking an ice cream cone. It needs to be fun.”

Twenty flavors are available at the store with the selection changing weekly, and four or five new flavors are in the works for summer 2019.

“The No. 1 question we get is ‘What is new?’ They are not satisfied with the 115 flavors that we have. They want 117 flavors. … That’s the way we are as humans. We want the next best thing. You try to come up with new things and new flavors,” Fry said.

On a summer weekend, the creamery sees about 1,000 visitors usually driving through coming from northern Virginia or Washington, D.C. Aside from single scoops, the creamery also offers milkshakes, sundaes, banana splits, twisters and ice cream floats, sandwiches and pies.

Fry does confess that he is more of a cookie man, himself: “I love cookies but, man, you put vanilla ice cream on anything and I am on it,” he says. “I can eat dirt if it’s got ice cream on it.”

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South Mountain Creamery 8305 Bolivar Road, Middletown 844-762-6455 southmountaincreamery.com

Rocky Point Creamery 4323A Tuscarora Road, Tuscarora 301-874-5810 rockypointcreamery.com

PHOTOGRAPHS BY LANIE SWANHART OF SOUTH MOUNTAIN CREAMERY

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