Packaging, Production

Burnt Caramel Ice Cream

We’ve been working on a burnt (dark) caramel ice cream for our shops, trying it out on willing customers, and trying to improve it. It’s trickier than I would have thought, and I’m not satisfied with the result yet, even though it’s good and is selling quite well.

I am hoping we can make it much more than good. I’m hoping it can become an unforgettable flavour, since in my mind it has the potential of being something very special indeed.

It’s both sweet and mysterious, simple and sophisticated. I want it darker, more intense, and we will be working on ways to make it more so.

I would love feedback, so if you’re near one of our shops, please have a taste (we do offer tastes for free) and please let me know what you think!

I’ll post a recipe here as soon as we have it sorted!

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Changing Times

Christophe, our steadfast ice cream maker, who has been with us for almost 10 years and was our second hire as a company,  is leaving us to open a restaurant on the tiny South Pacific island of Futuna. He is from that part of the world (New Caledonia), and I can certainly understand the attraction to heading back to balmy winds, hot sun and white sands.

We’ll miss him very much. He has brought so much to Murphys Ice Cream over the years and been a guardian of our quality. We owe him a debt of gratitude and wish him well.

This means that we will be short an ice cream maker, and we will be hiring.

If you are interested or know of someone who would like to live in beautiful Dingle (or does already) and make ice cream for a living, please email our production manager, JP Houlihan, with a cover letter and CV.

Bonne chance, Christophe!

Pretty in Pink?

3tubs1pink-sm For the last six months or so, we’ve been considering doing a pink tub in support of marriage equality. For those of you who are unaware of the issue, there will probably be a civil partnership bill working its way through the Dail in the new year.  While it’s a big step in the right direction (if it happens), there are those who wish it to go further. The following video,  I think, makes a good point:

Now, of course Ben & Jerry bravely celebrated Vermont’s passage of a marriage bill with their flavour Hubby Hubby, and there might be those who say we’re simply aping them.

However, I think it’s different since they were celebrating something that happened (and the tub was only released in Vermont), where we’d rather be hoping to support something that might happen with enough awareness and support (and I’ve been told the Marriage Equality folks are looking for support from the straight community).

As always, we’d be delighted for any feedback from everyone, but especially from customers… There is a poll below, or please comment.

[poll id=”7″]

Note: The original poll here was on twtpoll.com, but it was seriously slowing down the site, so I transferred the data to this poll.

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Via Gizmodo – Ice Cream-Filled Bananas?

Niamh, who works with us, brought my attention to this article on Gizmodo. It’s a 1932 patent for an injector that would fill bananas with ice cream. I think there could be possibilities there.

Given that the patent must have expired by now, if anyone is going to go ahead and produce such a device, let me know!

Our Cup Runneth Over the Doorstep

coffeecup I wrote a short time ago about how certain things have been so hard for us to find and the joy at finally sourcing items like decent waffle cones. This year seems to be the year of the find, for we’ve also come across an Irish company who does small print runs of custom printed takeaway coffee cups. Up until now, the smallest print run we could find was 10,000 units. I’m delighted with how the cups came out, and it’s the best of all worlds – not only are our takeaway coffees finally branded, but we’re able to buy Irish as well.

If anyone else has been on the same search, the company is called Cup Print, they are in Co. Clare, and their website is here.

Chocolate Poll

 We’re trying to improve our chocolate ice cream, and it’s meant lots of chocolate tasting around the place (not too many complaints from that, mind you).

Chocolate is a very tricky flavour, I think, since people rarely agree on chocolate. It’s either too dark or too light, it’s either too rich or too thin. We’ve always done a medium strength chocolate, using real melted chocolate, which makes it very luxurious, but not really strong enough for serious cocoa-heads.

I think the way we will go now is to do a range of chocolate ice creams, from milk chocolate to dark chocolate. If you wouldn’t mind, I’d love to know what the average preference is out there, so please take a moment to vote!
[poll id=”3″]
Thanks!

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Pink Champagne Sorbet in Shops

Pink Champagne Sorbet I’ve written here before about the Pink Champagne Sorbet, and it proved popular enough in our own shops that we have decided to launch into into a few select shops in Dublin and West Cork in 500ml tubs.

Pink Champagne Sorbet LabelIf you want to try it, it is available in:

  • Mortons, Renelagh
  • Fresh, Southdocks
  • Thomas’, Foxrock
  • Ennis Butchers, Rialto
  • Urru, Bandon (as of the next week or so)

We have always wanted to make some of our super, super-premium flavours available in tubs, and this will be a limited run. A word of warning – it won’t be cheap! The RRP is 20 euro for a tub. Then again, it’s simply packed with champagne!

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A Baking Day

We had a baking day in production with 6 of us, working on new recipes and combinations of flavours for cakes for the shops. It's really one of my favourite things, playing with taste and coming up with new combinations. 

I think the winner was our take on an Irish coffee cake - a chocolate sponge (with me, there always should be some chocolate) with a layer of whiskey cream, frosted with coffee cream. Keep an eye out for it in Dingle and Killarney!

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