July 17, 2020
Traveling along Route 30 yesterday, Gregg spotted The Turkey Hill Experience. Turkey Hill is a popular brand of ice cream in Pennsylvania. They also make iced teas.
After looking at their website and also looking at our remaining list of creameries to visit, we decided to take a few hours today to take their tour which includes taste testing ice creams and teas.
Our tour began at 10:30 a.m.
If you know me well, you probably know that this was right up my alley! It was SO FUN! We got to “milk a (fake) cow,” see some “how they make it,” learn some science, taste tested 5 Turkey Hill flavors of ice cream and 7-8 flavors of their ice tea, and took a lab class where we each created, mixed, and ate our own ice cream creation.
The Turkey Hill ice cream flavors that we ate were Waffle Cone Crunch, Peanut Butter Ripple, Dutch Chocolate, Chocolate Mint Chip (unlike what the name implies to me, it was mint ice cream with chocolate chips), and Vanilla Bean which turned out to be sugar free (Splenda) and fat free.
The sugar and fat free ice cream had a definite texture and fasted melting feel in the mouth. It was icier, less creamy. The texture was a step towards shaved ice, although not that icey. It was similar to the texture of the vegan “ice cream substitute” we have made. We both noticed the artificial sweetener after taste, even though Gregg is used to drinking Coke Zero.
We find it curious; there is a huge difference between the mass produced ice cream that you buy in a store vs homemade or the small dairy farm creameries.
Our lab instructor reminded me that regulations require a product listed as “ice cream” to have a minimum 10% milk fat. He said that milk fat may vary, depending on the flavor, but most of their’s are 11-12% milkfat.
Many of the creameries we’ve visited seem to have at least 14% milkfat, which will give a creamier texture.
Before leaving, I made a commercial for my new flavor of ice cream called Fruity Comfort. It was raspberry with cinnamon ice cream with blueberries and Graham crackers. I think. I didn’t taste it, it was all on computer (unless I missed it somewhere.)
We enjoyed our 2.5 hours at the Turkey Hill Experience. I’d recommend it and I would return.
